The Last Book of JVonder 





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ONE HOUSE ON THE PINNACLE LOOKING OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 



The Last 
Book of Wonder 



BY 



Lord Dunsany 



With Illustrations by 

S. H. SIME 



BOSTON 
JOHN W. LUCE «& COMPANY 



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Copyright, 1916, 
By John W. Luce & Company 



JAN I9I9!7 

©CI.A4r.5242 t- 



Preface 



Ebrington Barracks 
Aug. 16th 1916. 

I do not know where I may be when this 
preface is read. As I write it in August 1916, 
I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, 
recovering from a slight wound. But it 
does not greatly matter where I am; my 
dreams are here before you amongst the 
following pages; and writing in a day when 
life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the 
dearer, the only things that survive. 

Just now the civilization of Europe seems 
almost to have ceased, and nothing seems 
to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this 
is only for a while and dreams will come 
back again and bloom as of old, all the more 



Preface 

radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the 
flowers will bloom again where the trenches 
are and the primroses shelter in shell-holes 
for many seasons, when weeping Liberty 
has come home to Flanders. 

To some of you in America this may seem 
an unnecessary and wasteful quarrel, as 
other people's quarrels often are; but it 
comes to this that though we are all killed 
there will be songs again, but if we were to 
submit and so survive there could be neither 
songs nor dreams, nor any joyous free things 
any more. 

And do not regret the lives that are 
wasted amongst us, or the work that the 
dead would have done, for war is no accident 
that man's care could have averted, but is 
as natural, though not as regular, as the 
tides; as well regret the things that the tide 
has washed away, which destroys and 
cleanses and crumbles, and spares the 
minutest shells. 



Preface 

And now I will write nothing further 
about our war, but offer you these books of 
dreams from Europe as one throws things 
of value, if only to oneself, at the last 
moment out of a burning house. 

DUNSANY. 



Contents 



A Tale of London 
v/Thirteen at Table 
^ The City on Mallington Moor 

Why the Milkman Shudders when he 
Perceives the Dawn . 

The Bad Old Woman in Black 

The Bird of the Difficult Eye . 

The Long Porter's Tale 

The Loot of Loma 

The Secret of the Sea 

How Ali Came to the Black Country 

The Bureau d'Echange De Maux . 
^^ A Story of Land and Sea 

A Tale of the Equator 

A Narrow Escape 

The Watch-tower 

How Plash-Goo Came to the Land of 
None's Desire .... 
^ The Three Sailor's Gambit . 
^ The Exiles Club .... 

The Three Infernal Jokes . 



PAOE 

1 
8 

27 

42 

48 

53 

60 

72 

80 

88 

96 

106 

153 

159 

164 

169 
173 
190 
200 



List of Illustrations 

One House on the Pinnacle Looking Over 

THE Edge of the World . . Frontispiece 

To face page 
The Bad Old Woman in Black Ran Down 
THE Street of the Ox-butchers . 48 

There Stood that Lonely, Gnarled and 
Deciduous Tree .... 58 

They had Gone Three Days Along that 
Narrow Ledge ..... 72 

Midnight and Moonlight and the Temple 
in the Sea ..... 86 

Guided by Ali, all three Set Forth for 
the Midlands 90 



A Tale of London 




ome," said the Sultan to his 
hasheesh-eater in the very 
furthest lands that know 
Bagdad, "dream to me now 
of London." 
^^ And the hasheesh-eater 
made a low obeisance and seated himself 
cross-legged upon a purple cushion broid- 
ered with golden poppies, on the floor, be- 
side an ivory bowl where the hasheesh was, 
and having eaten liberally of the hasheesh 
blinked seven times and spoke thus: 

"O Friend of God, know then that 
London is the desiderate town even of all 
Earth's cities. Its houses are of ebony and 
cedar which they roof with thin copper 
plates that the hand of Time turns green. 
They have golden balconies in which ame- 
thysts are where they sit and watch the 
sunset. Musicians in the gloaming steal 

1 



The Last Book of Wonder 

softly along the ways; unheard their feet 
fall on the white sea-sand with which those 
ways are strewn, and in the darkness sud- 
denly they play on dulcimers and instru- 
ments with strings. Then are there mur- 
murs in the balconies praising their skill, 
then are there bracelets cast down to them 
for reward and golden necklaces and even 
pearls. 

"Indeed but the city is fair; there is by 
the sandy ways a paving all alabaster, and 
the lanterns along it are of chrysoprase, 
all night long they shine green, but of ame- 
thyst are the lanterns of the balconies. 

"As the musicians go along the ways dan- 
cers gather about them and dance upon the 
alabaster pavings, for joy and not for hire. 
Sometimes a window opens far up in an 
ebony palace and a wreath is cast down to 
a dancer or orchids showered upon them. 

"Indeed of many cities have I dreamt 
but of none fairer, through many marble 
metropoHtan gates hasheesh has led me, 
but London is its secret, the last gate of all; 
the ivory bowl has nothing more to show. 
And indeed even now the imps that crawl 
behind me and that will not let me be are 

2 



The Last Book of Wonder 

plucking me by the elbow and bidding my 
spirit return, for well they know that I 
have seen too much. 'No, not London,' 
they say; and therefore I will speak of some 
other city, a city of some less mysterious 
land, and anger not the imps with forbidden 
things. I will speak of Persepohs or fa- 
mous Thebes." 

A shade of annoyance crossed the Sul- 
tan's face, a look of thunder that you had 
scarcely seen, but in those lands they 
watched his visage well, and though his 
spirit was wandering far away and his eyes 
were bleared with hasheesh yet that story- 
teller there and then perceived the look 
that was death, and sent his spirit back at 
once to London as a man runs into his house 
when the thunder comes. 

"And therefore," he continued, "in the 
desiderate city, in London, all their camels 
are pure white. Remarkable is the swift- 
ness of their horses, that draw their chariots 
that are of ivory along those sandy ways 
and that are of surpassing hghtness, they 
have little bells of silver upon their horses' 
heads. O Friend of God, if you perceived 
their merchants! The glory of their dresses 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

in the noonday! They are no less gorgeous 
than those butterflies that float about their 
streets. They have overcloaks of green 
and vestments of azure, huge purple flow- 
ers blaze on their overcloaks, the work of 
cunning needles, the centres of the flowers 
are of gold and the petals of purple. All 
their hats are black — " ("No, no," said 
the Sultan) — "but irises are set about the 
brims, and green plumes float above the 
crowns of them. 

"They have a river that is named the 
Thames, on it their ships go up with violet 
sails bringing incense for the braziers that 
perfume the streets, new songs exchanged 
for gold with alien tribes, raw silver for 
the statues of their heroes, gold to make 
balconies where their women sit, great 
apphires to reward their poets with, the 
ecrets of old cities and strange lands, the 
earning of the dwellers in far isles, emeralds, 
diamonds and the hoards of the sea. And 
whenever a ship comes into port and furls 
its violet sails and the news spreads through 
London that she has come, then all the 
merchants go down to the river to barter, 
and all day long the chariots whirl through 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the streets, and the sound of their going is 
a mighty roar all day until evening, their 
roar is even like — " 

"Not so," said the Sultan. 

"Truth is not hidden from the Friend of 
God," rephed the hasheesh-eater, "I have 
erred being drunken with hasheesh, for in 
the desiderate city, even in London, so 
thick upon the ways is the white sea-sand 
with which the city glimmers that no 
sound comes from the path of the char- 
ioteers, but they go softly like a light sea- 
wind." ("It is well," said the Sultan.) 
"They go softly down to the port where the 
vessels are, and the merchandise in from 
the sea, amongst the wonders that the sail- 
ors show, on land by the high ships, and 
softly they go though swiftly at evening 
back to their homes. 

"0 would that the Munificent, the Illus- 
trious, the Friend of God, had even seen 
these things, had seen the jewellers with 
their empty baskets, bargaining there by 
the ships, when the barrels of emeralds 
came up from the hold. Or would that he 
had seen the fountains there in silver 
basins in the midst of the ways. I have 

5 



The Last Book of Wonder 

seen small spires upon their ebony houses 
and the spires were all of gold, birds strutted 
there upon the copper roofs from golden 
spire to spire that have no equal for splen- 
dour in all the woods of the world. And 
over London the desiderate city the sky 
is so deep a blue that by this alone the 
traveller may know where he has come, 
and may end his fortunate journey. Nor 
yet for any colour of the sky is there too 
great heat in London, for along its ways a 
wind blows always from the South gently 
and cools the city. 

"Such, Friend of God, is indeed the city 
of London, lying very far off on the yonder 
side of Bagdad, without a peer for beauty 
or excellence of its ways among all the 
towns of the earth or cities of song; and 
even so, as I have told, its fortunate citi- 
zens dwell, with their hearts ever devising 
beautiful things and from the beauty of 
their own fair work that is more abundant 
around them every year, receiving new 
inspirations to work things more beautiful 
yet." 

"And is their government good?" the 
Sultan said. 

6 



The Last Book of Wonder 

"It is most good," said the hasheesh- 
eater, and fell backwards upon the floor. 

He lay thus and was silent. And when 
the Sultan perceived he would speak no 
more that night he smiled and lightly 
applauded. 

And there was envy in that palace, in 
lands beyond Bagdad, of all that dwell in 
London. 



Thirteen at Table 




[n front of a spacious fireplace 
I of the old kind, when the logs' 
)were well alight, and men 
I with pipes and glasses were 
I gathered before it in great 
'easeful chairs, and the wild 
weather outside and the comfort that was 
within, and the season of the year — for it 
was Christmas — and the hour of the night, 
all called for the weird or uncanny, then out 
spoke the ex-master of foxhounds and told 
this tale. 

I once had an odd experience too. It 
was when I had the Bromley and Syden- 
ham, the year I gave them up — as a mat- 
ter of fact it was the last day of the season. 
It was no use going on because there were 
no foxes left in the county, and London 
was sweeping down on us. You could see 
it from the kennels all along the skyhne 



The Last Book of Wonder 

like a terrible army in grey, and masses of 
villas every year came skirmishing down 
our valleys. Our coverts were mostly on 
the hills, and as the town came down upon 
the valleys the foxes used to leave them 
and go right away out |of the county and 
they never returned. I think they went 
by night and moved great distances. Well 
it was early April and we had drawn blank 
all day, and at the last draw of all, the very 
last of the season, we found a fox. He left 
the covert with his back to London and its 
railways and villas and wire and slipped 
away towards the chalk country and open 
Kent. I felt as I once felt as a child on one 
summer's day when I found a door in a 
garden where I played left luckily ajar, and 
I pushed it open and the wide lands were 
before me and waving fields of corn. 

We settled down into a steady gallop and 
the fields began to drift by under us, and a 
great wind arose full of fresh breath. We 
left the clay lands where the bracken grows 
and came to a valley at the edge of the chalk. 
As we went down into it we saw the fox go 
up the other side like a shadow that crosses 
the evening, and ghde into a wood that 

9 



The Last Book of Wonder 

stood on the top. We saw a flash of prim- 
roses in the wood and we were out the other 
side, hounds hunting perfectly and the fox 
still going absolutely straight. It began 
to dawn on me then that we were in for a 
great hunt, I took a deep breath when I 
thought of it; the taste of the air of that 
perfect Spring afternoon as it came to one 
galloping, and the thought of a great run, 
were together like some old rare wine. 
Our faces now were to another valley, large 
fields led down to it, with easy hedges, at 
the bottom of it a bright blue stream went 
singing and a rambhng village smoked, the 
sunlight on the opposite slopes danced like 
a fairy; and all along the top old woods were 
frowning, but they dreamed of Spring. 
The "field" had fallen off and were far behind 
and my only human companion was James, 
my old first whip, who had a hound's in- 
stinct, and a personal animosity against a 
fox that even embittered his speech. 

Across the valley the fox went as straight 
as a railway line, and again we went with- 
out a check straight through the woods at 
the top. I remember hearing men sing or 
shout as they walked home from work, and 

10 



The Last Book of Wonder 

sometimes children whistled; the sounds 
came up from the village to the woods at 
the top of the valley. After that we saw 
no more villages, but valley after valley 
arose and fell before us as though we were 
voyaging some strange and stormy sea, and 
all the way before us the fox went dead up- 
wind like the fabulous Flying Dutchman. 
There was no one in sight now but my first 
whip and me, we had both of us got on to 
our second horses as we drew the last covert. 

Two or three times we checked in those 
great lonely valleys beyond the village, but 
I began to have inspirations, I felt a strange 
certainty within me that this fox was going 
on straight up-wind till he died or until 
night came and we could hunt no longer, so 
I reversed ordinary methods and only cast 
straight ahead and always we picked up 
the scent again at once. I believe that this 
fox was the last one left in the villa-haunted 
lands and that he was prepared to leave 
them for remote uplands far from men, that 
if we had come the following day he would 
not have been there, and that we just hap- 
pened to hit off his journey. 

Evening began to descend upon the 
11 



The Last Book of Wonder 

valleys, stiU the hounds drifted on, like the 
lazy but unresting shadows of clouds upon 
a summer's day, we heard a shepherd calling 
to his dog, we saw two maidens move to- 
wards a hidden farm, one of them singing 
softly; no other sounds, but ours, disturbed 
the leisure and the loneliness of haunts that 
seemed not yet to have known the inven- 
tions of steam and gun-powder (even as 
China, they say, in some of her furthest 
mountains does not yet know that she has 
fought Japan). 

And now the day and our horses were 
wearing out, but that resolute fox held on. 
I began to work out the run and to wonder 
where we were. The last landmark I had 
ever seen before must have been over five 
miles back and from there to the start was 
at least ten miles more. If only we could 
kiU! Then the sun set. I wondered what 
chance we had of killing our fox. I looked 
at James' face as he rode beside me. He 
did not seem to have lost any confidence, 
yet his horse was as tired as mine. It was 
a good clear twilight and the scent was as 
strong as ever, and the fences were easy 
enough, but those valleys were terribly 

12 



The Last Book of Wonder 

trjang and they still rolled on and on. 
It looked as if the hght would outlast all 
possible endurance both of the fox and the 
horses, if the scent held good and he did not 
go to ground, otherwise night would end it. 
For long we had seen no houses and no 
roads, only chalk slopes with the twilight on 
them, and here and there some sheep, and 
scattered copses darkening in the evening. 
At some moment I seemed to reahse all at 
once that the light was spent and that dark- 
ness was hovering, I looked at James, he 
was solemnly shaking his head. Suddenly 
in a little wooded valley we saw climb over 
the oaks the red-brown gables of a queer 
old house, at that instant I saw the fox 
scarcely heading by fifty yards. We blun- 
dered through a wood into full sight of the 
house, but no avenue led up to it or even 
a path nor were there any signs of wheel- 
marks anjrwhere. Already lights shone 
here and there in windows. We were in a 
park, and a fine park, but unkempt beyond 
credibility; brambles grew everywhere. It 
was too dark to see the fox any more but we 
knew he was dead beat, the hounds were just 
before us, — and a four-foot railing of oak. 

13 



The Last Book of Wonder 

I shouldn't have tried it on a fresh horse at 
the beginning of a run, and here was a horse 
near his last gasp. But what a run! an 
event standing out in a lifetime, and the 
hounds close up on their fox, slipping into 
the darkness as I hesitated. I decided to 
try it. My horse rose about eight inches 
and took it fair with his breast, and the oak 
log flew into handfuls of wet decay — it was 
rotten with years. And then we were on 
a lawn and at the far end of it the hounds 
were tumbling over their fox. Fox, horses 
and light were all done together at the end 
of a twenty-mile point. We made some 
noise then, but nobody came out of the 
queer old house. 

I felt pretty stiff as I walked round to the 
hall door with the mask and the brush 
while James went with the hounds and the 
two horses to look for the stables. I rang 
a bell marvellously encrusted with rust, and 
after a long while the door opened a little 
way revealing a hall with much old armour 
in it and the shabbiest butler that I have 
ever known. 

I asked him who lived there. Sir Rich- 
ard Arlen. I explained that my horse 

14 



The Last Book of Wonder 

could go no further that night and that I 
wished to ask Sir Richard Arlen for a bed 
for the night. 

"0, no one ever comes here, sir," said the 
butler. 

I pointed out that I had come. 

"I don't think it would be possible, sir," 
he said. 

This annoyed me and I asked to see Sir 
Richard, and insisted until he came. Then 
I apologised and explained the situation. 
He looked only fifty, but a 'Varsity oar on 
the wall with the date of the early seventies, 
made him older than that; his face had 
something of the shy look of the hermit; 
he regretted that he had not room to put 
me up. I was sure that this was untrue, 
also I had to be put up there, there was no- 
where else within miles, so I almost insisted. 
Then to my astonishment he turned to the 
butler and they talked it over in an under- 
tone. At last they seemed to think that 
they could manage it, though clearly with 
reluctance. It was by now seven o'clock and 
Sir Richard told me he dined at half past 
seven. There was no question of clothes 
for me other than those I stood in, as my 

15 



The Last Book of Wonder 

host was shorter and broader. He showed 
me presently to the drawing-room and there 
he reappeared before half past seven in 
evening dress and a white waistcoat. The 
drawing-room was large and contained old 
furniture but it was rather worn than ven- 
erable, an Aubusson carpet flapped about 
the floor, the wind seemed momently to 
enter the room, and old draughts haunted 
corners; the stealthy feet of rats that were 
never at rest indicated the extent of the 
ruin that time had wrought in the wain- 
scot; somewhere far off a shutter flapped to 
and fro, the guttering candles were insuffi- 
cient to light so large a room. The gloom 
that these things suggested was quite in 
keeping with Sir Richard's first remark to 
me after he entered the room: "I must 
tell you, sir, that I have led a wicked life. 
O, a very wicked life." 

Such confidences from a man much older 
than oneself after one has known him for 
half an hour are so rare that any possible 
answer merely does not suggest itself. I 
said rather slowly, "0, really," and chiefly 
to forestall another such remark I said, 
"What a charming house you have." 

16 



The Last Book of Wonder 

"Yes," he said, "I have not left it for 
nearly forty years. Since I left the 'Varsity. 
One is young there, you know, and one has 
opportunities; but I make no excuses, no 
excuses." And the door slipping its rusty 
latch, came drifting on the draught into the 
room, and the long carpet flapped and the 
hangings upon the walls, then the draught 
fell rusthng away and the door slammed to 
again. 

"Ah, Marianne," he said, "we have a 
guest to-night. Mr. Linton. This is 
Marianne Gib." And everything became 
clear to me. "Mad," I said to myseK, for 
no one had entered the room. 

The rats ran up the length of the room 
behind the wainscot ceaselessly, and the 
wind unlatched the door again and the folds 
of the carpet fluttered up to our feet and 
stopped there, for our weight held it down. 

"Let me introduce Mr. Linton," said 
my host — "Lady Mary Errinjer." 

The door slammed back again. I bowed 
pohtely. Even had I been invited I should 
have humoured him, but it was the very 
least that an uninvited guest could do. 

This kind of thing happened eleven times, 

17 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the rustling, and the fluttering of the carpet, 
and the footsteps of the rats, and the rest- 
less door, and then the sad voice of my host 
introducing me to phantoms. Then for 
some while we waited while I struggled 
with the situation; conversation flowed 
slowly. And again the draught came trail- 
ing up the room, while the flaring candles 
filled it with hurrying shadows. "Ah, late 
again. Cicely," said my host in his soft, 
mournful way. "Always late, Cicely." 
Then I went down to dinner with that man 
and his mind and the twelve phantoms that 
haunted it. I found a long table with fine 
old silver on it and places laid for fourteen. 
The butler was now in evening dress, there 
were fewer draughts in the dining-room, the 
scene was less gloomy there. "Will you 
sit next to Rosahnd at the other end," Sir 
Richard said to me. " She always takes the 
head of the table, I wronged her most of all." 
I said, "I shall be delighted." 

I looked at the butler closely, but never 
did I see by any expression of his face or by 
anything that he did any suggestion that 
he waited upon less than fourteen people in 
the complete possession of all their faculties. 

18 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

Perhaps a dish appeared to be refused more 
often than taken but every glass was 
equally filled with champagne. At first 
I found little to say, but when Sir Richard 
speaking from the far end of the table said, 
"You are tired, Mr. Linton," I was re- 
minded that I owed something to a host 
upon whom I had forced myself. It was 
excellent champagne and with the help of 
a second glass I made the effort to begin a 
conversation with a Miss Helen Errold for 
whom the place upon one side of me was 
laid. It came more easy to me very soon, 
I frequently paused in my monologue, like 
Mark Anthony, for a reply, and some- 
times I turned and spoke to Miss Rosahnd 
Smith. Sir Richard at the other end 
talked sorrowfully on, he spoke as a con- 
demned man might speak to his judge, 
and yet somewhat as a judge might speak 
to one that he once condemned wrongly. 
My own mind began to turn to mournful 
things. I drank another glass of cham- 
pagne, but I was still thirsty. I felt as if 
all the moisture in my body had been blown 
away over the downs of Kent by the wind 
up which we had galloped. Still I was not 

19 



The Last Book of Wonder 

talking enough; my host was looking at me. 
I made another effort, after all I had some- 
thing to talk about, a twenty-mile point is 
not often seen in a Hfetime, especially south 
of the Thames. I began to describe the 
run to RosaUnd Smith. I could see then 
that my host was pleased, the sad look in 
his face gave a kind of a flicker, Uke mist 
upon the mountains on a miserable day 
when a faint puff comes from the sea and 
the mist would hft if it could. And the 
butler refilled my glass very attentively. 
I asked her first if she hunted, and paused 
and began my story. I told her where we 
had found the fox and how fast and straight 
he had gone, and how I had got through the 
village by keeping to the road, while the 
little gardens and wire, and then the river, 
had stopped the rest of the field. I told 
her the kind of country that we crossed and 
how splendid it looked in the Spring, and 
how mysterious the valleys were as soon as 
the twihght came, and what a glorious 
horse I had and how wonderfully he went. 
I was so fearfully thirsty after the great 
hunt that I had to stop for a moment now 
and then, but I went on with my descrip- 

20 



The Last Book of Wonder 

tion of that famous run, for I had warmed 
to the subject, and after all there was 
nobody to tell of it but me except my old 
whipper-in, and "the old fellow's probably 
drunk by now," I thought. I described to 
her minutely the exact spot in the run at 
which it had come to me clearly that this 
was going to be the greatest hunt in the 
whole history of Kent. Sometimes I for- 
got incidents that had happened as one 
well may in a run of twenty miles, and 
then I had to fill in the gaps by inventing. 
I was pleased to be able to make the party 
go off well by means of my conversation, 
and besides that the lady to whom I was 
speaking was extremely pretty: I do not 
mean in a flesh and blood kind of way but 
there were Httle shadowy Knes about the 
chair beside me that hinted at an unusually 
graceful figure when Miss Rosalind Smith 
was aUve; and I began to perceive that 
what I first mistook for the smoke of gut- 
tering candles and a table-cloth waving in 
the draught was in reality an extremely 
animated company who Hstened, and not 
without interest, to my story of by far the 
greatest hunt that the world had ever 

21 



The Last Book of Wonder 

known: indeed I told them that I would 
confidently go further and predict that 
never in the history of the world would there 
be such a run again. Only my throat was 
terribly dry. And then as it seemed they 
wanted to hear more about my horse. I 
had forgotten that I had come there on a 
horse, but when they reminded me it all 
came back; they looked so charming lean- 
ing over the table intent upon what I said, 
that I told them everything they wanted 
to know. Everything was going so pleas- 
antly if only Sir Richard would cheer up. 
I heard his mournful voice every now and 
then — these were very pleasant people 
if only he would take them the right way. 
I could understand that he regretted his 
past, but the early seventies seemed cen- 
turies away and I felt sure that he misunder- 
stood these ladies, they were not revenge- 
ful as he seemed to suppose. I wanted to 
show him how cheerful they really were, 
and so I made a joke and they all laughed 
at it, and then I chaffed them a bit, espe- 
cially Rosalind, and nobody resented it in 
the very least. And still Sir Richard sat 
there with that unhappy look, like one that 

22 



The Last Book of Wonder 

has ended weeping because it is vain and 
has not the consolation even of tears. 

We had been a long time there and many 

of the candles had burned out, but there 

was Ught enough. I was glad to have an 

audience for my exploit, and being happy 

myseK I was determined Sir Richard should 

be. I made more jokes and they still 

laughed good-naturedly; some of the jokes 

were a little broad perhaps but no harm 

was meant. And then — I do not wish to 

excuse myself — but I had had a harder day 

than I ever had had before and without 

knowing it I must have been completely 

exhausted; in this state the champagne had 

found me, and what would have been 

harmless at any other time must somehow 

have got the better of me when quite tired 

out — anyhow I went too far, I made some 

joke — I cannot in the least remember 

what — that suddenly seemed to offend 

them. I felt all at once a commotion in the 

air, I looked up and saw that they had all 

arisen from the table and were sweeping 

towards the door: I had not time to open it 

but it blew open on a wind, I could scarcely 

see what Sir Richard was doing because 

23 



The Last Book of Wonder 

only two candles were left, I think the rest 
blew out when the ladies suddenly rose. I 
sprang up to apologise, to assure them — 
and then fatigue overcame me as it had 
overcome my horse at the last fence, I 
clutched at the table but the cloth came 
away and then I fell. The fall, and the 
darkness on the floor and the pent up 
fatigue of the day overcame me all three 
together. 

The sun shone over glittering fields and 
in at a bedroom window and thousands of 
birds were chanting to the Spring, and there 
I was in an old four-poster bed in a quaint 
old panelled bedroom, fully dressed and 
wearing long muddy boots; someone had 
taken my spurs and that was all. For a 
moment I failed to realise and then it all 
came back, my enormity and the pressing 
need of an abject apology to Sir Richard. 
I puUed an embroidered bell rope until the 
butler came. He came in perfectly cheerful 
and indescribably shabby. I asked him if 
Sir Richard was up, and he said he had just 
gone down, and told me to my amazement 
that it was twelve o'clock. I asked to be 
shown in to Sir Richard at once. He was in his 

24 



The Last Book of Wonder 

smoking-room. "Good morning," he said 
cheerfully the moment I went in. I went 
directly to the matter in hand. "I fear 
that I insulted some ladies in your house — " 
I began. 

"You did indeed," he said, "You did in- 
deed." And then he burst into tears and 
took me by the hand. "How can I ever 
thank you?" he said to me then. "We 
have been thirteen at table for thirty years 
and I never dared to insult them because 
I had wronged them all, and now you have 
done it and I know they will never dine here 
again." And for a long time he still held 
my hand, and then he gave it a grip and a 
kind of a shake which I took to mean "Good- 
bye" and I drew my hand away then and 
left the house. And I found James in the 
stables with the hounds and asked him 
how he had fared, and James, who is a man 
of very few words, said he could not rightly 
remember, and I got my spurs from the 
butler and climbed on to my horse and 
slowly we rode away from that queer old 
house, and slowly we wended home, for the 
hounds were footsore but happy and the 
horses were tired still. And when we re- 

35 



The Last Book of Wonder 

called that the hunting season was ended 
we turned our faces to Spring and thought 
of the new things that try to replace the old. 
And that very year I heard, and have often 
heard since, of dances and happier dinners 
at Sir Richard Arlen's house. 



26 




The City on 
Mallington Moor 

esides the old shepherd at 
Lingwold whose habits ren- 
der him unrehable I am prob- 
ably the only person that 
has ever seen the city on 
Mallington Moor. 
I had decided one year to do no London 
season; partly because of the ugliness of the 
things in the shops, partly because of the 
unresisted invasions of German bands, 
partly perhaps because some pet parrots 
in the oblong where I lived had learned to 
imitate cab- whistles; but chiefly because of 
late there had seized me in London a quite 
unreasonable longing for large woods and 
waste spaces, while the very thought of 
little valleys underneath copses full of 
bracken and foxgloves was a torment to me 
and every summer in London the longing 

27 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

grew worse till the thing was becoming 
intolerable. So I took a stick and a knap- 
sack and began walking northwards, start- 
ing at Tetherington and sleeping at inns, 
where one could get real salt, and the waiter 
spoke English and where one had a name 
instead of a number; and though the table- 
cloth might be dirty the windows opened 
so that the air was clean, where one had the 
excellent company of farmers and men of 
the wold, who could not be thoroughly 
vulgar, because they had not the money 
to be so even if they had wished it. At 
first the novelty was dehghtful, and then 
one day in a queer old inn up Uthering 
way, beyond Lingwold, I heard for the first 
time the rumour of the city said to be on 
Mallington Moor. They spoke of it quite 
casually over their glasses of beer, two farm- 
ers[^at the inn. "They say the queer folk 
be at Mallington with their city," one 
farmer said. " Travelling they seem to be," 
said the other. And more came in then and 
the rumour spread. And then, such are the 
contradictions of our little likes and dislikes 
and all the whims that drive us, that I, who 
had come so far to avoid cities, had a great 

28 



The Last Book of Wonder 

longing all of a sudden for throngs again and 
the great hives of Man, and then and there 
determined on that bright Sunday morn- 
ing to come to Mallington and there search 
for the city that rumour spoke of so 
strangely. 

MalHngton Moor, from all that they said 
of it, was hardly a likely place to find a 
thing by searching. It was a huge high 
moor, very bleak and desolate and alto- 
gether trackless. It seemed a lonely place 
from what they said. The Normans when 
they came had called it Mai Lieu and after- 
wards MaUintown and so it changed to 
MaUington. Though what a town can 
ever have had to do with a place so utterly 
desolate I do not know. And before that 
some say that the Saxons called it Baplas, 
which I believe to be a corruption of Bad 
Place. 

And beyond the mere rumour of a beau- 
tiful city all of white marble and with a 
foreign look up on MaUington Moor, beyond 
this I could not get. None of them had 
seen it himself, "only heard of it Uke," and 
my questions, rather than stimulating con- 
versation, would always stop it abruptly. 

29 



The Last Book of Wonder 

I was no more fortunate on the road to Mal- 
lington until the Tuesday, when I was quite 
near it; I had been walking two days from 
the inn where I had heard the rumour and 
could see the great hill steep as a headland 
on which MaUington lay, standing up on 
the skyUne: the hill was covered with grass, 
where anything grew at all, but MaUington 
Moor is all heather; it is just marked Moor 
on the map; nobody goes there and they do 
not trouble to name it. It was there where 
the gaunt hill first came into sight, by the 
roadside as I enquired for the marble city 
of some labourers by the way, that I was 
directed, partly I think in derision, to the 
old shepherd of Lingwold. It appeared 
that he, following sometimes sheep that had 
strayed, and wandering far from Lingwold, 
came sometimes up to the edge of Mal- 
lington Moor, and that he would come back 
from these excursions and shout through 
the villages, raving of a city of white marble 
and gold-tipped minarets. And hearing 
me asking questions of this city they had 
laughed and directed me to the shepherd of 
Lingwold. One well-meant warning they gave 
me as I went — the old man was not reliable. 

30 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And late that evening I saw the thatches 
of Lingwold sheltering under the edge of 
that huge hill that Atlas-like held up those 
miles of moor to the great winds and 
heaven. 

They knew less of the city in Lingwold 
than elsewhere but they knew the where- 
abouts of the man I wanted, though they 
seemed a Uttle ashamed of him. There was 
an inn in Lingwold that gave me shelter, 
whence in the morning, equipped with pur- 
chases, I set out to find their shepherd. 
And there he was on the edge of Mallington 
Moor standing motionless, gazing stupidly 
at his sheep; his hands trembled continually 
and his eyes had a blear look, but he was 
quite sober, wherein all Lingwold had 
wronged him. 

And then and there I asked him of the 
city and he said he had never heard tell of 
any such place. And I said, "Come, come, 
you must pull yourself together." And he 
looked angrily at me; but when he saw me 
draw from amongst my purchases a full 
bottle of whiskey and a big glass he became 
more friendly. As I poured out the whis- 
key I asked him again about the marble 

31 



The Last Book of Wonder 

city on Mallington Moor but he seemed 
quite honestly to know nothing about it. 
The amount of whiskey he drank was quite 
incredible, but I seldom express surprise and 
once more I asked him the way to the won- 
derful city. His hand was steadier now 
and his eyes more intelligent and he said 
that he had heard something of some such 
city, but his memory was evidently blurred 
and he was still unable to give me useful 
directions. I consequently gave him an- 
other tumbler, which he drank off Uke the 
first without any water, and almost at once 
he was a different man. The trembhng in 
his hands stopped altogether, his eye became 
as quick as a younger man's, he answered 
my questions readily and frankly, and, 
what was more important to me still, his 
old memory became alert and clear for even 
minutest details. His gratitude to myself 
I need not mention, for I make no pretence 
that I bought the bottle of whiskey that the 
old shepherd enjoyed so much without at 
least some thought of my own advantage. 
Yet itwas pleasant to reflect that it was due 
to me that he had pulled himself together 
and steadied his shaking hand and cleared 

32 



The Last Book of Wonder 

his mind, recovered his memory and his 
self-respect. He spoke to me quite clearly, 
no longer slurring his words; he had seen 
the city first one moonhght night when he 
was lost in the mist on the big moor, he had 
wandered far in the mist, and when it lifted 
he saw the city by moonlight. He had no 
food, but luckily had his flask. There never 
was such a city, not even in books. Travel- 
lers talked sometimes of Venice seen from 
the sea, there might be such a place or there 
might not, but, whether or no, it was noth- 
ing to the city on MalUngton Moor. Men 
who read books had talked to him in his 
time, hundreds of books, but they never 
could tell of any city Hke this. Why, the 
place was all of marble, roads, walls and 
palaces, all pure white marble, and the tops 
of the tall thin spires were entirely of gold. 
And they were queer folk in the city even 
for foreigners. And there were camels, but 
I cut him short for I thought I could judge 
for myself, if there was such a place, and, if 
not, I was wasting my time as well as a pint 
of good whiskey. So I got him to speak of 
the way, and after more circumlocution 
than I needed and more talk of the city he 

23 



The Last Book of Wonder 

pointed to a tiny track on the black earth 
just beside us, a little twisty way you could 
hardly see. 

I said the moor was trackless; untrodden 
of man or dog it certainly was and seemed 
to have less to do with the ways of man 
than any waste I have seen, but the track 
the old shepherd showed me, if track it was, 
was no more than the track of a hare — an 
elf -path the old man called it. Heaven knows 
what he meant. And then before I left 
him he insisted on giving me his flask with 
the queer strong rum it contained. Whis- 
key brings out in some men melancholy, in 
some rejoicing, with him it was clearly gen- 
erosity and he insisted until I took his rum, 
though I did not mean to drink it. It was 
lonely up there, he said, and bitter cold and 
the city hard to find, being set in a hollow, 
and I should need the rum, and he had 
never seen the marble city except on days 
when he had had his flask: he seemed to 
regard that rusted iron flask as a sort of 
mascot, and in the end I took it. 

I followed that odd, faint track on the 
black earth under the heather till I came to 
the big grey stone beyond the horizon, where 

34 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

the track divides into two, and I took the 
one to the left as the old man told me. I 
knew by another stone that I saw far off 
that I had not lost my way, nor the old man 
lied. 

And just as I hoped to see the city's ram- 
parts before the gloaming fell on that des- 
olate place, I suddenly saw a long high wall 
of whiteness with pinnacles here and there 
thrown up above it, floating towards me 
silent and grim as a secret, and knew it for 
that evil thing the mist. The sun, though 
low, was shining on every sprig of heather, 
the green and scarlet mosses were shining 
with it too, it seemed incredible that in three 
minutes' time all those colours would be 
gone and nothing left all round but a grey 
darkness. I gave up hope of finding the city 
that day, a broader path than mine could 
have been quite easily lost. I hastily chose 
for my bed a thick patch of heather, 
wrapped myseK in a waterproof cloak, and 
lay down and made myself comfortable. 
And then the mist came. It came like the 
careful puUing of lace curtains, then like the 
drawing of grey blinds; it shut out the hori- 
zon to the north, then to the east and west; 

35 



The Last Book of Wonder 

it turned the whole sky white and hid the 
moor; it came down on it Hke a metropohs, 
only utterly silent, silent and white as tomb- 
stones. 

And then I was glad of that strange 
strong rum, or whatever it was in the flask 
that the shepherd gave me, for I did not 
think that the mist would clear till night, 
and J feared the night would be cold. So 
I nearly emptied the flask; and, sooner than 
I expected, I fell asleep, for the first night 
out as a rule one does not sleep at once but 
is kept awake some while by the little winds 
and the unfamiliar sound of the things that 
wander at night, and that cry to one another 
far-off with their queer, faint voices; one 
misses them afterwards when one gets to 
houses again. But I heard none of these 
sounds in the mist that evening. 

And then I woke and found that the mist 
was gone and the sun was just disappearing 
under the moor, and I knew that I had not 
slept for as long as I thought. And I de- 
cided to go on while I could, for I thought 
that I was not very far from the city. 

I went on and on along the twisty track, 
bits of the mist came down and filled the 

36 



The Last Book of Wondtr 

hollows but lifted again at once so that I 
saw my way. The twilight faded as I went, 
a star appeared, and I was able to see the 
track no longer. I could go no further 
that night, yet before I lay down to sleep I 
decided to go and look over the edge of a 
wide depression in the moor that I saw a 
httle way off. So I left the track and 
walked a few hundred yards, and when I 
got to the edge the hollow was full of mist 
all white underneath me. Another star 
appeared and a cold wind arose, and with 
the wind the mist flapped away like a cur- 
tain. And there was the city. 

Nothing the shepherd had said was the 
least untrue or even exaggerated. The 
poor old man had told the simple truth, 
there is not a city Hke it in the world. What 
he had called thin spires were minarets, 
but the Httle domes on the top were clearly 
pure gold as he said. There were the mar- 
ble terraces he described and the pure white 
palaces covered with carving and hundreds 
of minarets. The city was obviously of 
the East and yet where there should have 
been crescents on the domes of the min- 
arets there were golden suns with rays, and 

37 



The Last Book of Wonder 

wherever one looked one saw things that 
obscured its origin. I walked down to it, 
and, passing through a wicket gate of gold 
in a low wall of white marble, I entered the 
city. The heather went right up to the 
city's edge and beat against the marble wall 
whenever the wind blew it. Lights began 
to twinkle from high windows of blue glass 
as I walked up the white street, beautiful 
copper lanterns were lit up and let down 
from balconies by silver chains, from doors 
ajar came the sound of voices singing, and 
then I saw the men. Their faces were 
rather grey than black, and they wore beau- 
tiful robes of coloured silk with hems em- 
broidered with gold and some with copper, 
and sometimes pacing down the marble 
ways with golden baskets hung on each 
side of them I saw the camels of which the 
old shepherd spoke. 

The people had kindly faces, but, though 
they were evidently friendly to strangers, 
I could not speak with them being ignorant 
of their language, nor were the sounds of 
the syllables they used like any language 
I had ever heard: they sounded more like 
grouse. 

38 



The Last Book of Wonder 

When I tried to ask them by signs whence 
they had come with their city they would 
only point to the moon, which was bright 
and full and was shining fiercely on those 
marble ways till the city danced in light. 
And now there began appearing one by one, 
slipping softly out through windows, men 
with stringed instruments in the balconies. 
They were strange instruments with huge 
bulbs of wood, and they played softly on 
them and very beautifully, and their queer 
voices softly sang to the music weird dirges 
of the griefs of their native land wherever 
that may be. And far off in the heart of 
the city others were singing too, the sound 
of it came to me wherever I roamed, not 
loud enough to disturb my thoughts, but 
gently turning the mind to pleasant things. 
Slender carved arches of marble, as delicate 
almost as lace, crossed and re-crossed the 
ways wherever I went. There was none of 
that hurry of which foolish cities boast, 
nothing ugly or sordid so far as I could see. 
I saw that it was a city of beauty and song. 
I wondered how they had travelled with all 
that marble, how they had laid it down on 
MaUington Moor, whence they had come 

39 



The Last Book of Wonder 

and what their resources were, and deter- 
mined to investigate closely next morning, 
for the old shepherd had not troubled his 
head to think how the city came, he had 
only noted that the city was there (and of 
course no one beUeved him, though that is 
partly his fault for his dissolute ways). 
But at night one can see little and I had 
walked all day, so I determined to find a 
place to rest in. And just as I was won- 
dering whether to ask for shelter of those silk- 
robed men by signs or whether to sleep out- 
side the walls and enter again in the morn- 
ing, I came to a great archway in one of the 
marble houses with two black curtains, 
embroidered below with gold, hanging across 
it. Over the archway were carved appar- 
ently in many tongues the words: "Here 
strangers rest." In Greek, Latin and 
Spanish the sentence was repeated and 
there was writing also in the language that 
you see on the walls of the great temples of 
Egypt, and Arabic and what I took to be 
early Assyrian and one or two languages I 
had never seen. I entered through the 
curtains and found a tesselated marble 
court with golden braziers burning sleepy 

40 



The Last Bool^ of Wonder 

incense swinging by chains from the roof, 
all round the walls were comfortable mat- 
tresses lying upon the floor covered with 
cloths and silks. It must have been ten 
o'clock and I was tired. Outside the music 
still softly filled the streets, a man had set a 
lantern down on the marble way, five or six 
sat down round him, and he was sonorously 
telling them a story. Inside there were 
some already asleep on the beds, in the 
middle of the wide court under the braziers 
a woman dressed in blue was singing very 
gently, she did not move, but sung on and 
on, I never heard a song that was so sooth- 
ing. I lay down on one of the mattresses 
by the waU, which was all inlaid with 
mosaics, and pulled over me some of the 
cloths with their beautiful ahen work, and 
abnost immediately my thoughts seemed part 
of the song that the woman was singing in the 
midst of the court under the golden braziers 
that hung from the high roof, and the song 
turned them to dreams, and so I fell asleep. 
A smaU wind having arisen, I was awak- 
ened by a sprig of heather that beat con- 
tinually against my face. It was morning on 
MaUington Moor,and the city was quite gone. 

41 



IVhy the Milkman 
Shudders 

JVhen he Perceives the T)awn 




n the Hall of the Ancient 
Company of Milkmen round 
the great fireplace at the end, 
when the winter logs are burn- 
ing and all the craft are as- 
sembled they tell to-day, as 
their grandfathers told before them, why 
the milkman shudders when he perceives 
the dawn. 

When dawn comes creeping over the 
edges of hills, peers through the tree trunks 
making wonderful shadows, touches the 
tops of tall columns of smoke going up from 
awakening cottages in the valleys, and 
breaks all golden over Kentish fields, when 
going on tip-toe thence it comes to the walls 
of London and slips all shyly up those 
gloomy streets the milkman perceives it 
and shudders. 

42 



The Last Book of Wonder 

A man may be a Milkman's Working 
Apprentice, may know what borax is and 
how to mix it, yet not for that is the story 
told to him. There are five men alone that 
tell that story, five men appointed by the 
Master of the Company, by whom each 
place is filled as it falls vacant, and if you 
do not hear it from one of them you hear 
the story from none and so can never know 
why the milkman shudders when he per- 
ceives the dawn. 

It is the way of one of these five men, 
greybeards all and milkmen from infancy, 
to rub his hands by the fire when the great 
logs bum, and to settle himself more easily 
in his chair, perhaps to sip some drink far 
other than milk, then to look round to see 
that none are there to whom it would not 
be fitting the tale should be told and, look- 
ing from face to face and seeing none but 
the men of the Ancient Company, and 
questioning mutely the rest of the five with 
his eyes, if some of the five be there, and 
receiving their permission, to cough and to 
tell the tale. And a great hush falls in the 
Hall of the Ancient Company, and some- 
thing about the shape of the roof and the 

43 



The Last Book of Wonder 

rafters makes the tale resonant all down 
the hall so that the youngest hears it far 
away from the fire and knows, and dreams 
of the day when perhaps he will tell himself 
why the milkman shudders when he per- 
ceives the dawn. 

Not as one tells some casual fact is it 
told, nor is it commented on from man to 
man, but it is told by that great fire only and 
when the occasion and the stillness of the 
room and the merit of the wine and the 
profit of all seem to warrant it in the opinion 
of the five deputed men: then does one of 
them tell it, as I have said, not heralded 
by any master of ceremonies but as though 
it arose out of the warmth of the fire before 
which his knotted hands would chance to 
be; not a thing learned by rote, but told 
differently by each teller, and differently 
according to his mood, yet never has one of 
them dared to alter its salient points, there 
is none so base among the Company of 
Milkmen. The Company of Powderers 
for the Face know of this story and have 
envied it, the Worthy Company of Chin- 
Barbers, and the Company of Whiskerers; 
but none have heard it in the Milkmen's 

44 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Hall, through whose wall no rumour of the 
secret goes, and though they have invented 
tales of their own Antiquity mocks them. 

This mellow story was ripe with hon- 
ourable years when milkmen wore beaver 
hats, its origin was still mysterious when 
white smocks were the vogue, men asked 
one another when Stuarts were on the 
throne (and only the Ancient Company 
knew the answer) why the milkman shud- 
ders when he perceives the dawn. It is all 
for envy of this tale's reputation that the 
Company of Powderers for the Face have 
invented the tale that they too tell of an 
evening," Why the Dog Barks when he hears 
the step of the Baker"; and because prob- 
ably all men know that tale the Company 
of Powderers for the Face have dared to 
consider it famous. Yet it lacks mystery 
and is not ancient, is not fortified with clas- 
sical allusion, has no secret lore, is common 
to all who care for an idle tale, and shares 
with "The Wars of the Elves," the CaK- 
butcher's tale, and "The Story of the 
Unicorn and the Rose," which is the tale of 
the Company of Horse-drivers, their obvious 
inferiority. 

45 



The Last Book of Wonder 

But unlike all these tales so new to time, 
and many another that the last two cen- 
turies tell, the tale that the milkmen tell 
ripples wisely on, so full of quotation from 
the profoundest writers, so full of recondite 
allusion, so deeply tinged with all the wis- 
dom of man and instructive with the ex- 
perience of all times that they that hear it 
in the Milkmen's Hall as they interpret 
allusion after allusion and trace obscure 
quotation lose idle curiosity and forget to 
question why the milkman shudders when 
he perceives the dawn. 

You also, my reader, give not yourself 
up to curiosity. Consider of how many it 
is the bane. Would you to gratify this tear 
away the mystery from the Milkmen's Hall 
and wrong the Ancient Company of Milk- 
men? Would they if all the world knew it 
and it became a conmion thing tell that tale 
any more that they have told for the last 
four hundred years? Rather a silence 
would settle upon their hall and a universal 
regret for the ancient tale and the ancient 
winter evenings. And though curiosity 
were a proper consideration yet even then 
this is not the proper place nor this the 

46 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

proper occasion for the Tale. For the 
proper place is only the Milkmen's Hall and 
the proper occasion only when logs burn 
well and when wine has been deeply drunken, 
then when the candles were burning well in 
long rows down to the dimness, down to the 
darkness and mystery that lie at the end of 
the hall, then were you one of the Company, 
and were I one of the five, would I rise from 
my seat by the fireside and tell you with all 
the embellishments that it has gleaned from 
the ages that story that is the heirloom of 
the milkmen. And the long candles would 
burn lower and lower and gutter and gutter 
away till they liquified in their sockets, and 
draughts would blow from the shadowy 
end of the hall stronger and stronger till the 
shadows came after them, and still I would 
hold you with that treasured story, not by 
any wit of mine but all for the sake of its 
glamour and the times out of which it came; 
one by one the candles would flare and die 
and, when all were gone, by the light of 
ominous sparks when each milkman's face 
looks fearful to his fellow, you would know, 
as now you cannot, why the milkman 
shudders when he perceives the dawn. 

47 




The Bad Old 
Woman in Black 



jr^^he bad old woman in black 
ran down the street of the 
ox-butchers. 

Windows at once were 
opened high up in those crazy 
gables ; heads were thrust out : 
it was she. Then there arose the counsel 
of anxious voices, calling sideways from 
window to window or across to opposite 
houses. Why was she there with her 
sequins and bugles and old black gown? 
Why had she left her dreaded house? On 
what fell errand she hasted? 

They watched her lean, lithe figure, and 
the wind in that old black dress, and soon 
she was gone from the cobbled street and 
under the town's high gateway. She turned 
at once to her right and was hid from the 

48 











<*.», , 



THE BAD OLD WOMAN IN BLACK RAN DOWN THE STREET OF THE 
OX-BUTCHERS 



The Last Book of Wonder 

view of the houses. Then they all ran 
down to their doors, and small groups 
formed on the pavement; there they took 
counsel together, the eldest speaking first. 
Of what they had seen they said nothing, 
for there was no doubt it was she; it was of 
the future they spoke, and the future only. 

In what notorious thing would her errand 
end? What gains had tempted her out 
from her fearful home? What brilliant but 
sinful scheme had her genius planned? 
Above all, what future evil did this portend? 
Thus at first it was only questions. And 
then the old grey-beards spoke, each one to 
a fit tie group; they had seen her out before, 
had known her when she was younger, and 
had noted the evil things that had followed 
her goings: the small groups listened well 
to their low and earnest voices. No one 
asked questions now or guessed at her in- 
famous errand, but listened only to the wise 
old men who knew the things that had been, 
and who told the younger men of the dooms 
that had come before. 

Nobody knew how many times she had 
left her dreaded house; but the oldest 
recounted all the times that they knew, and 

49 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the way she had gone each time, and the 
doom that had followed her going; and two 
could remember the earthquake that there 
was in the street of the shearers. 

So were there many tales of the times 
that were, told on the pavement near the 
old green doors by the edge of the cobbled 
street, and the experience that the aged 
men had bought with their white hairs 
might be had cheap by the young. But 
from all their experience only this was clear, 
that never twice in their lives had she done 
the same infamous thing, and that the same 
calamity twice had never followed her 
goings. Therefore it seemed that means 
were doubtful and few for finding out what 
thing was about to befall; and an ominous 
feehng of gloom came down on the street 
of the ox-butchers. And in the gloom 
grew fears of the very worst. This comfort 
they only had when they put their fear into 
words — that the doom that followed her 
goings had never yet been anticipated. 
One feared that with magic she meant to 
move the moon; and he would have dammed 
the high tide on the neighbouring coast, 
knowing that as the moon attracted the sea 

50 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the sea must attract the moon, and hoping 
by his device to humble her spells. An- 
other would have fetched iron bars and 
clamped them across the street, remember- 
ing the earthquake there was in the street 
of the shearers. Another would have hon- 
oured his household gods, the little cat- 
faced idols seated above his hearth, gods to 
whom magic was no unusual thing, and, 
having paid their fees and honoured them 
well, would have put the whole case before 
them. His scheme found favour with many, 
and yet at last was rejected, for others ran 
indoors and brought out their gods too, to 
be honoured, till there was a herd of gods 
all seated there on the pavement; yet 
would they have honoured them and put 
their case before them but that a fat man 
ran up last of all, carefully holding under a 
reverent arm his own two hound-faced gods, 
though he knew well — as, indeed, all men 
must — that they were notoriously at war 
with the little cat-faced idols. And al- 
though the animosities natural to faith had 
all been lulled by the crisis, yet a look of 
anger had come in the cat-Hke faces that no 
one dared disregard, and all perceived that 

51 



The Last Book of Wonder 

if they stayed a moment longer there would 
be flaming around. them the jealousy of the 
gods; so each man hastily took his idols 
home, leaving the fat man insisting that his 
hound-faced gods should be honoured. 

Then were there schemes again and voices 
raised in debate, and many new dangers 
feared and new plans made. 

But in the end they made no defence 
against danger, for they knew not what it 
would be, but wrote upon parchment as a 
warning and in order that all might know: 
"TAe bad old woman in black ran down the 
street of the ox-butchers," 



52 



The Bird of the 
Difficult Eye 




bservant men and women that 
know their Bond Street well 
will appreciate my astonish- 
ment when in a jewellers' shop 
I perceived that nobody was 
furtively watching me. Not 
only this but when I even picked up a little 
carved crystal to examine it no shop-assist- 
ants crowded round me. I walked the 
whole length of the shop, still no one politely 
followed. 

Seeing from this that some extraordinary 
revolution had occurred in the jewelry bus- 
iness I went with my curiosity well aroused 
to a queer old person haK demon and half 
man who has an idol-shop in a byway of 
the City and who keeps me informed of 
affairs of the Edge of the World. And 
briefly over a pinch of heather incense that 

53 



The Last Bool^ of Wonder 

he takes by way of snuff he gave me this tre- 
mendous information: that Mr. Neepy 
Thang the son of Thangobrind had returned 
from the Edge of the World and was even 
now in London. 

The information may not appear tre- 
mendous to those unacquainted with the 
source of jewelry; but when I say that the 
only thief employed by any West-end 
jeweller since famous Thangobrind's dis- 
tressing doom is this same Neepy Thang, 
and that for hghtness of fingers and swift- 
ness of stockinged foot they have none 
better in Paris, it will be understood why 
the Bond-street jewellers no longer cared 
what became of their old stock. 

There were big diamonds in London that 
summer and a few considerable sapphires. 
In certain astounding kingdoms behind 
the East strange sovereigns missed from 
their turbans the heirlooms of ancient wars, 
and here and there the keepers of crown 
jewels who had not heard the stockinged feet 
of Thang, were questioned and died slowly. 

And the jewellers gave a little dinner to 
Thang at the Hotel Great Magnificent; the 
windows had not been opened for five years 

54 



The Last Book of Wonder 

and there was wine at a guinea a bottle that 
you could not tell from champagne and 
cigars at half a crown with a Havana label. 
Altogether it was a splendid evening for 
Thang. 

But I have to tell of a far sadder thing 
than a dinner at a hotel. The public 
require jewelry and jewelry must be ob- 
tained. I have to tell of Neepy Thang's 
last journey. 

That year the fashion was emeralds. A 
man named Green had recently crossed the 
Channel on a bicycle and the jewellers said 
that a green stone would be particularly 
appropriate to commemorate the event and 
recommended emeralds. 

Now a certain money-lender of Cheapside 
who had just been made a peer had divided 
his gains into three equal parts; one for the 
purchase of the peerage, country-house and 
park, and the twenty thousand pheasants 
that are absolutely essential, and one for the 
upkeep of the position, while the third he 
banked abroad, partly to cheat the native tax- 
gatherer and partly because it seemed to 
him that the days of the Peerage were few 
and that he might at any moment be called 

55 



The Last Book of Wonder 

upon to start afresh elsewhere. In the 
upkeep of the position he included jew- 
ellry for his wife and so it came about that 
Lord Castlenorman placed an order with two 
well-known Bond-street jewellers named 
Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell to the ex- 
tent of £100,000 for a few reliable emeralds. 

But the emeralds in stock were mostly 
small and shop-soiled and Neepy Thang 
had to set out at once before he had had as 
much as a week in London. I will briefly 
sketch his project. Not many knew it, 
for where the form of business is blackmail 
the fewer creditors you have the better 
(which of course in various degrees applies 
at all times). 

On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora 
Shan grows one tree only so that upon its 
branches if anywhere in the world there 
must build its nest the Bird of the Difficult 
Eye. Neepy Thang had come by this in- 
formation, which was indeed the truth, 
that if the bird migrated to Fairyland before 
the three eggs hatched out they would un- 
doubtedly all turn into emeralds, while if they 
hatched out first it would be a bad business. 

When he had mentioned these eggs to 

56 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell they had 
said, "The very thing": they were men of 
few words, in English, for it was not their 
native tongue. 

So Neepy Thang set out. He bought 
the purple ticket at Victoria Station. He 
went by Heme Hill, Bromley and Bickley 
and passed St. Mary Cray. At Eynsford 
he changed and taking a footpath along a 
winding valley went wandering into the 
hills. And at the top of a hill in a Httle 
wood, where all the anemones long since 
were over and the perfume of mint and 
thyme from outside came drifting in with 
Thang, he found once more the familiar 
path, age-old and fair as wonder, that leads 
to the Edge of the World. Little to him 
were its sacred memories that are one with 
the secret of earth, for he was out on bus- 
iness, and Uttle would they be to me if I 
ever put them on paper. Let it suffice 
that he went down that path going further 
and further from the fields we know, and all 
the way he muttered to himself, "What if 
the eggs hatch out and it be a bad business ! " 
The glamour that is at all times upon those 
lonely lands that lie at the back of the 

57 



The Last Book of Wonder 

chalky hills of Kent intensified as he went 
upon his journeys. Queerer and queerer 
grew the things that he saw by little World- 
End Path. Many a twilight descended 
upon that journey with all their mysteries, 
many a blaze of stars; many a morning came 
flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns; till 
the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight 
and the glittering crests of Fairyland's three 
mountains betokened the journey's end. 
And so with painful steps (for the shores of 
the world are covered with huge crystals) 
he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan 
and saw them pounding to gravel the 
wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and 
heard their roar, those shipless seas that 
between earth and the fairies' homes 
heave beneath some huge wind that is 
none of our four. And there in the dark- 
ness on the grizzly coast, for darkness 
was swooping slantwise down the sky as 
though with some evil purpose, there stood 
that lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. 
It was a bad place to be found in after 
dark, and night descended with multitudes 
of stars, beasts prowling in the blackness 
gluttered * at Neepy Thang. And there on 

* See any dictionary, but in vain. 
58 




THERE STOOD THAT LONELY, GNARLED AND DECIDUOUS TREE 



The Last Book of Wonder 

a lower branch within easy reach he clearly 
saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting 
upon the nest for which she is famous. Her 
face was towards those three inscrutable 
mountains, far-off on the other side of the 
risky seas, whose hidden valleys are Fairy- 
land. Though not yet autumn in the fields 
we know, it was close on mid-winter here, 
the moment as Thang knew well when those 
eggs hatch out. Had he miscalculated and 
arrived a minute too late? Yet the bird 
was even now about to migrate, her pinions 
fluttered and her gaze was toward Fairyland. 
Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those 
pagan gods whose spite and vengeance he 
had most reason to fear. It seems that it 
was too late or a prayer too small to placate 
them, for there and then the stroke of mid- 
winter came and the eggs hatched out in 
the roar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird 
was gone with her difficult eye and it was a 
bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I 
haven't the heart to tell you any more. 

"'Ere," said Lord Castlenorman some 
few weeks later to Messrs. Grosvenor and 
Campbell, "you aren't 'arf taking your 
time about those emeralds." 

59 



The Long 

Porter's Tale 




here are things that are known 
only to the long porter of 
Tong Tong Tarrup as he sits 
and mumbles memories to 
himself in the little bastion 
gateway. 

He remembers the war there was in the 
halls of the gnomes; and how the fairies 
came for the opals once, which Tong Tong 
Tarrup has; and the way that the giants 
went through the fields below, he watching 
from his gateway : he remembers quests that 
are even yet a wonder to the gods. Who 
dwells in those frozen houses on the high 
bare brink of the world not even he has told 
me, and he is held to be garrulous. Among 
the elves, the only living things ever seen 
moving at that awful altitude where they 
quarry turquoise on Earth's highest crag, 

60 



The Last Book of Wonder 

his name is a byword for loquacity where- 
with they mock the talkative. 

His favourite story if you offer him bash 
— the drug of which he is fondest, and for 
which he will give his service in war to the 
elves against the goblins, or vice -versa if the 
goblins bring him more — his favourite 
story, when bodily soothed by the drug and 
mentally fiercely excited, tells of a quest 
undertaken ever so long ago for nothing 
more marketable than an old woman's song. 

Picture him telling it. An old man, 
lean and bearded, and almost monstrously 
long, that lolled in a city's gateway on a 
crag perhaps ten miles high; the houses for 
the most part facing eastward, ht by the 
sun and moon and the constellations we 
know, but one house on the pinnacle look- 
ing over the edge of the world and ht by the 
glimmer of those unearthly spaces where 
one long evening wears away the stars: my 
Httle offering of bash; a long forefinger that 
nipped it at once on a stained and greedy 
thumb — all these are in the foreground of 
the picture. In the background, the mys- 
tery of those silent houses and of not know- 
ing who their denizens were, or what service 

61 



The Last Book of Wonder 

they had at the hands of the long porter and 
what payment he had in return, and whether 
he was mortal. 

Picture him in the gateway of this incred- 
ible town, having swallowed my bash in 
silence, stretch his great length, lean back, 
and begin to speak. 

It seems that one clear morning a hundred 
years ago, a visitor to Tong Tong Tarrup 
was climbing up from the world. He had 
already passed above the snow and had set 
his foot on a step of the earthward stairway 
that goes down from Tong Tong Tarrup on 
to the rocks, when the long porter saw him. 
And so painfully did he climb those easy 
steps that the grizzled man on watch had 
long to wonder whether or not the stranger 
brought him bash, the drug that gives a 
meaning to the stars and seems to explain 
the twilight. And in the end there was not 
a scrap of bash, and the stranger had noth- 
ing better to offer that grizzled man than 
his mere story only. 

It seems that the stranger's name was 
Gerald Jones, and he always lived in Lon- 
don; but once as a child he had been on a 
Northern moor. It was so long ago that he 

62 



The Last Book of Wonder 

did not remember how, only somehow or 
other he walked alone on the moor, and all 
the ling was in flower. There was nothing 
in sight but ling and heather and bracken, 
except, far off near the sunset, on indistinct 
hills, there were httle vague patches that 
looked like the fields of men. With eve- 
ning a mist crept up and hid the hills, and 
still he went walking on over the moor. 
And then he came to the valley, a tiny val- 
ley in the midst of the moor, whose sides 
were incredibly steep. He lay down and 
looked at it through the roots of the Hng. 
And a long, long way below him, in a garden 
by a cottage, with hollyhocks all round her 
that were taller than herself, there sat an 
old woman on a wooden chair, singing in 
the evening. And the man had taken a 
fancy to the song and remembered it after 
in London, and whenever it came to his mind 
it made him think of evenings — the kind 
you don't get in London — and he heard a 
soft wind again going idly over the moor 
and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot 
the noise of the traffic. And always, when- 
ever he heard men speak of Time, he 
grudged to Time most this song. Once 

63 



The Last Book of Wonder 

afterwards he went to that Northern moor 
again and found the tiny valley, but there 
was no old woman in the garden, and no one 
was singing a song. And either regret for 
the song that the old woman had sung, on 
a summer evening twenty years away and 
daily receding, troubled his mind, or else the 
wearisome work that he did in London, for 
he worked for a great firm that was per- 
fectly useless; and he grew old early, as men 
do in cities. And at last, when melancholy 
brought only regret and the uselessness of 
his work gained ground with age, he decided 
to consult a magician. So to a magician he 
went and told him his troubles, and partic- 
ularly he told him how he had heard the 
song. "And now," he said, "it is nowhere 
in the world." 

"Of course it is not in the world," the 
magician said, "but over the Edge of the 
World you may easily find it." And he 
told the man that he was suffering from flux 
of time and recommended a day at the Edge 
of the World. Jones asked what part of 
the Edge of the World he should go to, and 
the magician had heard Tong Tong Tarrup 
well spoken of; so he paid him, as is usual, 

64 



The Last Bool^ of Wonder 

in opals, and started at once on the journey. 
The ways to that town are winding; he took 
the ticket at Victoria Station that they only 
give if they know you : he went past Bleth : 
he went along the Hills of Neol-Hungar and 
came to the Gap of Poy. All these are in 
that part of the world that pertains to the 
fields we know; but beyond the Gap of Poy 
on those ordinary plains, that so closely 
resemble Sussex, one first meets the unlikely. 
A line of common grey hills, the Hills of 
Sneg, may be seen at the edge of the plain 
from the Gap of Poy; it is there that the 
incredible begins, infrequently at first, but 
happening more and more as you go up the 
hills. For instance, descending once into 
Poy Plains, the first thing that I saw was an 
ordinary shepherd watching a flock of ordi- 
nary sheep. I looked at them for some 
time and nothing happened, when, without 
a word, one of the sheep walked up to the 
shepherd and borrowed his pipe and smoked 
it — an incident that struck me as unlikely; 
but in the Hills of Sneg I met an honest 
poHtician. Over these plains went Jones 
and over the Hills of Sneg, meeting at first 
unlikely things, and then incredible things, 

65 



The Last Book of Wonder 

till he came to the long slope beyond the 
hills that leads up to the Edge of the World, 
and where, as all guide-books tell, anything 
may happen. You might at the foot of this 
slope see here and there things that could 
conceivably occur in the fields we know; 
but soon these disappeared, and the trav- 
eller saw nothing but fabulous beasts, 
browsing on flowers as astounding as them- 
selves, and rocks so distorted that their 
shapes had clearly a meaning, being too 
starthng to be accidental. Even the trees 
were shockingly unfamiUar, they had so 
much to say, and they leant over to one an- 
other whenever they spoke and struck gro- 
tesque attitudes and leered. Jones saw 
two fir-trees fighting. The effect of these 
scenes on his nerves was very severe; still 
he climbed on, and was much cheered at last 
by the sight of a primrose, the only familiar 
thing he had seen for hours, but it whistled 
and skipped away. He saw the unicorns in 
their secret valley. Then night in a sin- 
ister way slipped over the sky, and there 
shone not only the stars, but lesser and 
greater moons, and he heard dragons rat- 
tling in the dark. 

66 



The Last Book of Wonder 

With dawn there appeared above him among 
its amazing crags the town of Tong Tong 
Tarrup, with the hght on its frozen stairs, 
a tiny cluster of houses far up in the sky. 
He was on the steep mountain now: great 
mists were leaving it slowly, and revealing, 
as they trailed away, more and more aston- 
ishing things. Before the mist had all gone 
he heard quite near him, on what he had 
thought was bare mountain, the sound of a 
heavy galloping on turf. He had come to 
the plateau of the centaurs. And all at once 
he saw them in the mist: there they were, 
the children of fable, five enormous centaurs. 
Had he paused on account of any astonish- 
ment he had not come so far: he strode on 
over the plateau, and came quite near to the 
centaurs. It is never the centaurs' wont to 
notice men; they pawed the ground and 
shouted to one another in Greek, but they 
said no word to him. Nevertheless they 
turned and stared at him when he left them, 
and when he had crossed the plateau and 
still went on, all five of them cantered after 
to the edge of their green land; for above 
the high green plateau of the centaurs is 
nothing but naked mountain, and the last 

67 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

green thing that is seen by the mountaineer 
as he travels to Tong Tong Tarrup is the 
grass that the centaurs trample. He came 
into the snow fields that the mountain 
wears like a cape, its head being bare above 
it, and still climbed on. The centaurs 
watched him with increasing wonder. 

Not even fabulous beasts were near him 
now, nor strange demoniac trees — nothing 
but snow and the clean bare crag above it 
on which was Tong Tong Tarrup. All day 
he climbed and evening found him above 
the snow-line; and soon he came to the stair- 
way cut in the rock and in sight of that 
grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong 
Tarrup, sitting mumbling amazing mem- 
ories to himself and expecting in vain from 
the stranger a gift of bash. 

It seems that as soon as the stranger 
arrived at the bastion gateway, tired though 
he was, he demanded lodgings at once that 
commanded a good view of the Edge of the 
World. But the long porter, that grizzled 
man, disappointed of his bash, demanded 
the stranger's story to add to his memories 
before he would show him the way. And 
this is the story, if the long porter has told 

68 



The Last Book of Wonder 

me the truth and if his memory is still what 
it was. And when the story was told, the 
grizzled man arose, and, danghng his musi- 
cal keys, went up through door after door 
and by many stairs and led the stranger to 
the top-most house, the highest roof in the 
world, and in its parlour showed him the 
parlour window. There the tired stranger 
sat down in a chair and gazed out of the 
window sheer over the Edge of the World. 
The window was shut, and in its gHttering 
panes the twihght of World's Edge blazed 
and danced, partly like glow-worms' lamps 
and partly Hke the sea; it went by rippHng, 
full of wonderful moons. But the traveller 
did not look at the wonderful moons. For 
from the abyss there grew with their roots 
in far constellations a row of hollyhocks, 
and amongst them a small green garden 
quivered and trembled as scenes tremble in 
water; higher up, ling in bloom was floating 
upon the twihght, more and more floated 
up till all the twihght was purple; the httle 
green garden low down was hung in the 
midst of it. And the garden down below, 
and the ling all round it, seemed all to be 
trembhng and drifting on a song. For the 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

twilight was full of a song that sang and rang 
along the edges of the World, and the green 
garden and the ling seemed to flicker and 
ripple with it as the song rose and fell, and 
an old woman was singing it down in the 
garden. A bumble-bee sailed across from 
over the Edge of the World. And the song 
that was lapping there against the coasts 
of the World, and to which the stars were 
dancing, was the same that he had heard 
the old woman sing long since down in the 
valley in the midst of the Northern moor. 

But that grizzled man, the long porter, 
would not let the stranger stay, because he 
brought him no bash, and impatiently he 
shouldered him away, himself not troubling 
to glance through the World's outermost 
window, for the lands that Time afflicts and 
the spaces that Time knows not are all one 
to that grizzled man, and the bash that he 
eats more profoundly astounds his mind 
than anything man can show him either in 
the World we know or over the Edge. And, 
bitterly protesting, the traveller went back 
and down again to the World. 



70 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Accustomed as I am to the incredible 
from knowing the Edge of the World, the 
story presents difficulties to me. Yet it 
may be that the devastation wrought by 
Time is merely local, and that outside the 
scope of his destruction old songs are still 
being sung by those that we deem dead. I 
try to hope so. And yet the more I investi- 
gate the story that the long porter told me 
in the town of Tong Tong Tarrup the more 
plausible the alternative theory appears — 
that that grizzled man is a liar. 



71 



The Loot of Loma 




oming back laden with the 
loot of Loma, the four tall 
men looked earnestly to the 
right; to the left they durst 
not, for the precipice there 
that had been with them so 
long went sickly down on to a bank of 
clouds, and how much further below that 
only their fears could say. 

Loma lay smoking, a city of ruin, behind 
them, all its defenders dead; there was no 
one left to pursue them, and yet their 
Indian instincts told them that all was 
scarcely well. They had gone three days 
along that narrow ledge: mountain quite 
smooth, incredible, above them, and preci- 
pice as smooth and as far below. It was 
chilly there in the mountains; at night a 
stream or a wind in the gloom of the chasm 

72 



,i > 




THEY HAD GONE THREE DAYS ALONG THAT NARROW LEDGE 



The Last Book of Wonder 

below them went like a whisper; the stillness 
of all things else began to wear the nerve — 
an enemy's howl would have braced them; 
they began to wish their perilous path were 
wider, they began to wish that they had not 
sacked Loma. 

Had that path been any wider the sacking 
of Loma must indeed have been harder for 
them, for the citizens must have fortified 
the city but that the awful narrowness of 
that ten-league pass of the hills had made 
their crag-surrounded city secure. And at 
last an Indian had said, "Come, let us sack 
it." Grimly they laughed in the wigwams. 
Only the eagles, they said, had ever seen it, 
its hoard of emeralds and its golden gods; 
and one had said he would reach it, and they 
answered, "Only the eagles." 

It was Laughing Face who said it, and 
who gathered thirty braves and led them 
into Loma with their tomahawks and their 
bows; there were only four left now, but 
they had the loot of Loma on a mule. They 
had four golden gods, a hundred emeralds, 
fifty-two rubies, a large silver gong, two 
sticks of malachite with amethyst handles 
for holding incense at reUgious feasts, four 

73 



The Last Book of Wonder 

beakers one foot high, each carved from a 
rose-quartz crystal; a Uttle coffer carved 
out of two diamonds, and (had they but 
known it) the written curse of a priest. It 
was written on parchment in an unknown 
tongue, and had been sHpped in with the 
loot by a dying hand. 

From either end of that narrow, terrible 
ledge the third night was closing in; it was 
dropping down on them from the heights of 
the mountain and slipping up to them out of 
the abyss, the third night since Loma blazed 
and they had left it. Three more days of 
tramping should bring them in triumph 
home, and yet their instincts said that all 
was scarcely well. We who sit at home and 
draw the blinds and shut the shutters as 
soon as night appears, who gather round the 
fire when the wind is wild, who pray at 
regular seasons and in familiar shrines, 
know little of the demoniac look of night 
when it is filled with curses of false, infuriated 
gods. Such a night was this. Though in 
the heights the fleecy clouds were idle, yet 
the wind was stirring mournfully in the 
abyss and moaning as it stirred, unhappily 
at first and full of sorrow; but as day turned 

74 



The Last Book of Wonder 

away from that awful path a very definite 
menace entered its voice which fast grew 
louder and louder, and night came on with 
a long howl. Shadows repeatedly passed 
over the stars, and then a mist fell swiftly, 
as though there were something suddenly 
to be done and utterly to be hidden, as in 
very truth there was. 

And in the chill of that mist the four tall 
men prayed to their totems, the whimsical 
wooden figures that stood so far away, 
watching the pleasant wigwams; the fire- 
light even now would be dancing over their 
faces, while there would come to their ears 
delectable tales of war. They halted upon 
the pass and prayed, and waited for any sign. 
For a man's totem may be in the likeness 
perhaps of an otter, and a man may pray, 
and if his totem be placable and watching 
over his man a noise may be heard at once 
like the noise that the otter makes, though 
it be but a stone that falls on another stone; 
and the noise is a sign. The four men's 
totems that stood so far away were in the 
likeness of the coney, the bear, the heron, 
and the lizard. They waited, and no sign 
came. With all the noises of the wind in 

75 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the abyss, no noise was like the thump that 
the coney makes, nor the bear's growl, nor 
the heron's screech, nor the rustle of the 
lizard in the reeds. 

It seemed that the wind was saying some- 
thing over and over again, and that that 
thing was evil. They prayed again to their 
totems, and no sign came. And then they 
knew that there was some power that night 
that was prevailing against the pleasant 
carvings on painted poles of wood with the 
firehght on their faces so far away. Now 
it was clear that the wind was saying some- 
thing, some very, very dreadful thing in a 
tongue that they did not know. They 
Hstened, but they could not tell what it said. 
Nobody could have said from seeing their 
faces how much the four tall men desired 
the wigwams again, desired the camp-fire 
and the tales of war and the benignant 
totems that listened and smiled in the dusk: 
Nobody could have seen how well they 
knew that this was no common night or 
wholesome mist. 

When at last no answer came nor any 
sign from their totems, they pulled out of 
the bag those golden gods that Loma gave 

76 



The Last Book of Wonder 

not up except in flames and when all her 
men were dead. They had large ruby eyes 
and emerald tongues. They set them down 
upon that mountain pass, the cross-legged 
idols with their emerald tongues; and having 
placed between them a few decent yards, as 
it seemed meet there should be between 
gods and men, they bowed them down and 
prayed in their desperate straits in that 
dank, ominous night to the gods they had 
wronged, for it seemed that there was a 
vengeance upon the hills and that they 
would scarce escape, as the wind knew well. 
And the gods laughed, all four, and wagged 
their emerald tongues; the Indians saw 
them, though the night had fallen and 
though the mist was low. The four tall 
men leaped up at once from their knees and 
would have left the gods upon the pass but 
that they feared some hunter of their tribe 
might one day find them and say of Laugh- 
ing Face, "He fled and left behind his 
golden gods," and sell the gold and come 
with his wealth to the wigwams and be 
greater than Laughing Face and his three 
men. And then they would have cast the 
gods away, down the abyss, with their eyes 

77 



The Last Book of Wonder 

and their emerald tongues, but they knew 
that enough akeady they had wronged 
Loma's gods, and feared that vengeance 
enough was waiting them on the hills. So 
they packed them back in the bag on the 
frightened mule, the bag that held the curse 
they knew nothing of, and so pushed on 
into the menacing night. Till midnight 
they plodded on and would not sleep; 
grimmer and grimmer grew the look of the 
night, and the wind more full of meaning, 
and the mule knew and trembled, and it 
seemed that the wind knew, too, as did the 
instincts of those four tall men, though 
they could not reason it out, try how they 
would. 

And though the squaws waited long 
where the pass winds out of the mountains, 
near where the wigwams are upon the 
plains, the wigwams and the totems and the 
fire, and though they watched by day, and 
for many nights uttered familiar calls, still 
did they never see those four tall men 
emerge out of the mountains any more, even 
though they prayed to their totems upon 
their painted poles; but the curse in the 



78 



The Last Book of Wonder 

mystical writing that they had unknown in 
their bag worked there on that lonely pass 
six leagues from the ruins of Loma, and 
nobody can tell us what it was. 



79 



The Secret of the Sea 




jn an ill-lit ancient tavern that 
II know, are many tales of the 
)sea; but not without the wine 
jof Gorgondy, that I had of a 
(private bargain from the 
'gnomes, was the tale laid bare 
for which I had waited of an evening for the 
greater part of a year. 

I knew my man and listened to his stories, 
sitting amid the bluster of his oaths; I pHed 
him with rum and whiskey and mixed drinks, 
but there never came the tale for which I 
sought, and as a last resort I went to the 
Huthneth Mountains and bargained there 
all night with the chiefs of the gnomes. 

When I came to the ancient tavern and 
entered the low-roofed room, bringing the 
hoard of the gnomes in a bottle of hammered 
iron, my man had not yet arrived. The 

80 



The Last Book of Wonder 

sailors laughed at my old iron bottle, but I 
sat down and waited; had I opened it then 
they would have wept and sung. I was 
well content to wait, for I knew my man had 
the story, and it was such a one as had pro- 
foundly stirred the increduhty of the faith- 
less. 

He entered and greeted me, and sat down 
and called for brandy. He was a hard man 
to turn from his purpose, and, uncorking 
my iron bottle, I sought to dissuade him 
from brandy for fear that when the brandy, 
bit his throat he should refuse to leave it 
for any other wine. He hfted his head and 
said deep and dreadful things of any man 
that should dare to speak against brandy, 

I swore that I said nothing against brandy 
but added that it was often given to chil- 
dren, while Gorgondy was only drunk by 
men of such depravity that they had aban- 
doned sin because all the usual vices had 
come to seem genteel. When he asked if 
Gorgondy was a bad wine to drink I said 
that it was so bad that if a man sipped it 
that was the one touch that made damna- 
tion certain. Then he asked me what I 
had in the iron bottle, and I said it was 

81 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Gorgondy; and then he shouted for the 
largest tumbler in that ill-lit ancient tavern, 
and stood up and shook his fist at me when 
it came, and swore, and told me to fill it 
with the wine that I got on that bitter night 
from the treasure house of the gnomes. 

As he drank it he told me that he had 
met men who had spoken against wine, and 
that they had mentioned Heaven; and there- 
fore he would not go there — no, not he; 
and that once he had sent one of them to 
Hell, but when he got there he would turn 
him out, and he had no use for milksops. 

Over the second tumbler he was thought- 
ful, but still he said no word of the tale he 
knew, until I feared that it would never be 
heard. But when the third glass of that 
terrific wine had burned its way down his 
gullet, and vindicated the wickedness of 
the gnomes, his reticence withered like a 
leaf in the fire, and he bellowed out the 
secret. 

I had long known that there is in ships a 
will or way of their own, and had even 
suspected that when sailors die or abandon 
their ships at sea, a derelict, being left to 
her own devices, may seek her own ends; 

82 



The Last Book of Wonder 

but I had never dreamed by night, or fan- 
cied during the day, that the ships had a 
god that they worshipped, or that they 
secretly sHpped away to a temple in the sea. 

Over the fourth glass of the wine that the 
gnomes so sinfully brew but have kept so 
wisely from man, until the bargain that I 
had with their elders all through that 
autumn night, the sailor told me the story. 
I do not tell it as he told it to me because of 
the oaths that were in it; nor is it from del- 
icacy that I refrain from writing these oaths 
verbatim, but merely because the horror 
they caused in me at the time troubles me 
still whenever I put them on paper, and I 
continue to shudder until I have blotted 
them out. Therefore, I tell the story in 
my own words, which, if they possess a 
certain decency that was not in the mouth 
of that sailor, unfortunately do not smack, 
as his did, of rum and blood and the sea. 

You would take a ship to be a dead thing 
like a table, as dead as bits of iron and can- 
vas and wood. That is because you always 
live on shore, and have never seen the sea, 
and drink milk. Milk is a more accursed 
drink than water. 

83 



The Last Book. 0/ Wonder 

What with the captain and what with the 
man at the wheel, and what with the crew, 
a ship has no fair chance of showing a will 
of her own. 

There is only one moment in the history 
of ships, that carry crews on board, when 
they act by their own free will. This 
moment comes when all the crew are drunk. 
As the last man falls drunk on to the deck, 
the ship is free of man, and immediately 
slips away. She slips away at once on 
a new course and is never one yard out in 
a hundred miles. 

It was like this one night with the Sea- 
Fancy. Bill Smiles was there himself, and 
can vouch for it. Bill Smiles has never 
told this tale before for fear that anyone 
should call him a liar. Nobody dislikes 
being hung as much as Bill Smiles would, 
but he won't be called a liar. I tell the tale 
as I heard it, relevancies and irrelevancies, 
though in my more decent words; and as I 
made no doubts of the truth of it then, I 
hardly hke to now; others can please them- 
selves. 

It is not often that the whole of a crew is 
drunk. The crew of the Sea-Fancy was no 

S4 



The Last Book of Wonder 

dmnkener than others. It happened like this. 

The captain was always drunk. One day 
a fancy he had that some spiders were 
plotting against him, or a sudden bleeding 
he had from both his ears, made him think 
that drinking might be bad for his health. 
Next day he signed the pledge. He was 
sober all that morning and all the afternoon, 
but at evening he saw a sailor drinking a 
a glass of beer, and a fit of madness seized 
him, and he said things that seemed bad to 
Bill Smiles. And next morning he made all 
of them take the pledge. 

For two days nobody had a drop to 
drink, unless you count water, and on the 
third morning the captain was quite drunk 
It stood to reason they all had a glass or two 
then, except the man at the wheel; and to- 
wards evening the man at the wheel could 
bear it no longer, and seems to have had his 
glass like all the rest, for the ship's course 
wobbled a bit and made a circle or two. 
Then all of a sudden she went off south by 
east under full canvas till midnight, and 
never altered her course. And at midnight 
she came to the wide wet courts of the 
Temple in the Sea. 

85 



The Last Book of Wonder 

People who think that Mr. Smiles is 
drunk often make a great mistake. And 
people are not the only ones that have made 
that mistake. Once a ship made it, and a 
lot of ships. It's a mistake to think that 
old Bill Smiles is drunk just because he 
can't move. 

Midnight and moonlight and the Temple 
in the Sea Bill Smiles clearly remembers, 
and all the derelicts in the world were there, 
the old abandoned ships. The figureheads 
were nodding to themselves and bhnking 
at the image. The image was a woman of 
white marble on a pedestal in the outer 
court of the Temple of the Sea: she was 
clearly the love of all the man-deserted 
ships, or the goddess to whom they prayed 
their heathen prayers. And as Bill Smiles 
was watching them, the Hps of the figure- 
heads moved; they all began to pray. But 
all at once their lips were closed with a snap 
when they saw that there were men on the 
Sea-Fancy. They all came crowding up 
and nodded and nodded and nodded to see 
if all were drunk, and that's when they 
made their mistake about old Bill Smiles, 
although he couldn't move. They would 

86 




MIDNIGHT AND MOONLIGHT AND THE TEMPLE IN THE SEA 



The Last Book of Wonder 

have given up the treasuries of the gulfs 
sooner than let men hear the prayers they 
said or guess their love for the goddess. It 
is the intimate secret of the sea. 

The sailor paused. And, in my eager- 
ness to hear what lyrical or blasphemous 
thing those figureheads prayed by moon- 
hght at midnight in the sea to the woman 
of marble who was a goddess to ships, I 
pressed on the sailor more of my Gorgondy 
wine that the gnomes so wickedly brew. 

I should never have done it; but there he 
was sitting silent while the secret was almost 
mine. He took it moodily and drank a 
glass; and with the other glasses that he had 
had he fell a prey to the villainy of the 
gnomes who brew this unbridled wine to no 
good end. His body leaned forward slowly, 
then fell on to the table, his face being side- 
ways and full of a wicked smile, and, saying 
very clearly the one word, "Hell," he be- 
came silent for ever with the secret he had 
from the sea. 



87 




How AH Came 
to the Black Country 

hooshan the barber went to 
Shep the maker of teeth to 
discuss the state of England. 
They agreed that it was time 
to send for AH. 

So Shooshan stepped late 
that night from the little shop near Fleet 
Street and made his way back again to his 
house in the ends of London and sent at 
once the message that brought Ali. 

And Ali came, mostly on foot, from the 
country of Persia, and it took him a year 
to come; but when he came he was welcome. 
And Shep told Ali what was the matter 
with England and Shooshan swore that it 
was so, and Ali looking out of the window 
of the little shop near Fleet Street beheld 
the ways of London and audibly blessed 
King Solomon and his seal. 



The Last Book of Wonder 

When Shep and Shooshan heard the 
names of King Solomon and his seal both 
asked, as they had scarcely dared before, 
if Ali had it. AH patted a Httle bundle of 
silks that he drew from his inner raiment. 
It was there. 

Now concerning the movements and 
courses of the stars and the influence on 
them of spirits of Earth and devils this age 
has been rightly named by some The Second 
Age of Ignorance. But Ali knew. And 
by watching nightly, for seven nights in 
Bagdad, the way of certain stars he had 
found out the dwelling place of Him they 
Needed. 

Guided by AH aU three set forth for the 
Midlands. And by the reverence that was 
manifest in the faces of Shep and Shooshan 
towards the person of Ali, some knew what 
Ali carried, while others said that it was the 
tablets of the Law, others the name of God, 
and others that he must have a lot of money 
about him. So they passed Slod and 
Apton. 

And at last they came to the town for 
which AU sought, that spot over which he 
had seen the shy stars wheel and swerve 

89 



The Last Book of Wonder 

away from their orbits, being troubled. 
Verily when they came there were no stars, 
though it was midnight. And AH said that 
it was the appointed place. In harems in 
Persia in the evening when the tales go 
round it is still told how AH and Shep and 
Shooshan came to the Black country. 

When it was dawn they looked upon the 
country and saw how it was without doubt 
the appointed place, even as Ali had said, 
for the earth had been taken out of pits and 
burned and left lying in heaps, and there 
were many factories, and they stood over 
the town and as it were rejoiced. And 
with one voice Shep and Shooshan gave 
praise to Ali. 

And AH said that the great ones of the 
place must needs be gathered together, and 
to this end Shep and Shooshan went into 
the town and there spoke craftily. For 
they said that AH had of his wisdom con- 
trived as it were a patent and a novelty 
which should greatly benefit England. And 
when they heard how he sought nothing for 
his novelty save only to benefit mankind 
they consented to speak with AH and see his 
novelty. And they came forth and met AH. 

90 




GUIDED BY ALT, ALL THREE SET FCRTH FOR THE MIDLANDS 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And Ali spake and said unto them:"0 
lords of this place; in the book that all men 
know it is written how that a fisherman 
casting his net into the sea drew up a bottle 
of brass, and when he took the stopper from 
the bottle a dreadful genie of horrible aspect 
rose from the bottle, as it were hke a smoke, 
even to darkening the sky, whereat the 
fisherman . . ." And the great ones 
of that place said: "We have heard the 
story." And Ali said: "What became of 
that genie after he was safely thrown back 
into the sea is not properly spoken of by any 
save those that pursue the study of demons 
and not with certainty by any man, but 
that the stopper that bore the ineffable seal 
and bears it to this day became separate 
from the bottle is among those things that 
man may know." And when there was 
doubt among the great ones AH drew forth 
his bundle and one by one removed those 
many silks till the seal stood revealed; and 
some of them knew it for the seal and others 
knew it not. 

And they looked curiously at it and lis- 
tened to Ali, and Ali said : 

"Having heard how evil is the case of 

91 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

England, how a smoke has darkened the 
country, and in places (as men say) the 
grass is black, and how even yet your fac- 
tories multiply, and haste and noise have 
become such that men have no time for 
song, I have therefore come at the bidding 
of my good friend Shooshan, barber of 
London, and of Shep, a maker of teeth, to 
make things well with you." 

And they said: "But where is your patent 
and your novelty?" 

And Ali said: "Have I not here the 
stopper and on it, as good men know, the 
ineffable seal? Now I have learned in 
Persia how that your trains that make the 
haste, and hurry men to and fro, and your 
factories and the digging of your pits and 
all the things that are evil are every one of 
them caused and brought about by steam." 

"Is it not so?" said Shooshan. 

"It is even so," said Shep. 

"Now it is clear," said Ali, "that the chief 
devil that vexes England and has done all 
this harm, who herds men into cities and 
will not let them rest, is even the devil 
Steam." 

Then the great ones would have rebuked 

92 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

him but one said: *'No, let us hear him, 
perhaps his patent may improve on steam." 

And to them hearkening AH went on 
thus: "0 Lords of this place, let there be 
made a bottle of strong steel, for I have no 
bottle with my stopper, and this being done 
let all the factories, trains, digging of pits, 
and all evil things soever that may be done 
by steam be stopped for seven days, and the 
men that tend them shall go free, but the 
steel bottle for my stopper I will leave open 
in a Hkely place. Now that chief devil, 
Steam, finding no factories to enter into, 
nor no trains, sirens nor pits prepared for 
him, and being curious and accustomed to 
steel pots, will verily enter one night into 
the bottle that you shall make for my stop- 
per, and I shall spring forth from my hiding 
with my stopper and fasten him down with 
the ineffable seal which is the seal of King 
Solomon and deliver him up to you that you 
cast him into the sea." 

And the great ones answered AU and they 
said: "But what should we gain if we lose 
our prosperity and be no longer rich? " 

And Ali said: "When we have cast this 
devil into the sea there will come back 

93 



The Last Book of Wonder 

again the woods and ferns and all the beau- 
tiful things that the world hath, the little 
leaping hares shall be seen at play, there 
shall be music on the hills again, and at twi- 
light ease and quiet and after the twihght 
stars." 

And "Verily," said Shboshan, "there 
shall be the dance again." 

"Aye," said Shep, "there shall be the 
country dance." 

But the great ones spake and said, deny- 
ing Ali: "We will make no such bottle for 
your stopper nor stop our healthy factories 
or good trains, nor cease from our digging 
of pits nor do anything that you desire, for 
an interference with steam would strike at 
the roots of that prosperity that you see so 
plentifully all around us." 

Thus they dismissed Ali there and then 
from that place where the earth was torn 
up and burnt, being taken out of pits, and 
where factories blazed all night with a de- 
moniac glare; and they dismissed with him 
both Shooshan, the barber, and Shep, the 
maker of teeth: so that a week later Ali 
started from Calais on his long walk back 
to Persia. 

94 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And all this happened thirty years ago, 
and Shep is an old man now and Shooshan 
older, and many mouths have bit with the 
teeth of Shep (for he has a knack of getting 
them back whenever his customers die), 
and they have written again to Ali away in 
the country of Persia with these words, 
saying: 

"O Ali. The devil has indeed begotten 
a devil, even that spirit Petrol. And the 
young devil waxeth, and increaseth in lusti- 
hood and is ten years old and becoming Mke 
to his father. Come therefore and help us 
with the ineffable seal. For there is none 
like Ah." 

And Ali turns where his slaves scatter 
rose-leaves, letting the letter fall, and deeply 
draws from his hookah a puff of the scented 
smoke, right down into his lungs, and sighs 
it forth and smiles, and lolling round on to 
his other elbow speaks comfortably and says, 
"And shall a man go twice to the help of a 
dog?" 

And with these words he thinks no more 
of England but ponders again the inscru- 
table ways of God. 



95 




The Bureau 
D 'Echange 
De Maux 

[often think of the Bureau 
Id'Echange de Maux and the 
iwondrously evil old man that 
(sate therein. It stood in a 
I little street that there is in 
'Paris, its doorway made of 
three brown beams of wood, the top one 
overlapping the others like the Greek letter 
pi, all the rest painted green, a house far 
lower and narrower than its neighbours and 
infinitely stranger, a thing to take one's 
fancy. And over the doorway on the old 
brown beam in faded yellow letters this 
legend ran. Bureau Universel d'Echanges 
de Maux. 

I entered at once and accosted the Hstless 
man that lolled on a stool by his counter. I 
demanded the wherefore of his wonderful 
house, what evil wares he exchanged, with 

96 



The Last Book of Wonder 

many other things that I wished to know, 
for curiosity led me; and indeed had it not 
I had gone at once from the shop, for there 
was so evil a look in that fattened man; in 
the hang of his fallen cheeks and his sinful 
eye, that you would have said he had had 
dealings with Hell and won the advantage 
by sheer wickedness. 

Such a man was mine host; but above aU 
the evil of him lay in his eyes, which lay so 
still, so apathetic, that you would have 
sworn that he was drugged or dead; like 
lizards motionless on a wall they lay, then 
suddenly they darted, and all his cunning 
flamed up and revealed itself in what one 
moment before seemed no more than a 
sleepy and ordinary wicked old man. And 
this was the object and trade of that 
peculiar shop, the Bureau Universel d'E- 
changes de Maux: you paid twenty francs, 
which the old man proceeded to take from 
me, for admission to the bureau and then 
had the right to exchange any evil or mis- 
fortune with anyone on the premises for 
some evil or misfortune that he "could 
afford," as the old man put it. 

There were four or five men in the dingy 

97 



The Last Book of Wonder 

ends of that low-ceilinged room who gestic- 
ulated and muttered softly in twos as men 
who make a bargain, and now and then 
more came in, and the eyes of the flabby 
owner of the house leaped up at them as 
they entered, seemed to know their errands 
at once and each one's peculiar need, and 
fell back again into somnolence, receiving 
his twenty francs in an almost lifeless hand 
and biting the coin as though in pure ab- 
sence of mind. 

"Some of my clients," he told me. So 
amazing to me was the trade of this extra- 
ordinary shop that I engaged the old man 
in conversation, repulsive though he was, 
and from his garrulity I gathered these facts. 
He spoke in perfect EngHsh though his 
utterance was somewhat thick and heavy; 
no language seemed to come amiss to him. 
He had been in business a great many years, 
how many he would not say, and was far 
older than he looked. All kinds of people 
did business in his shop. What they ex- 
changed with each other he did not care 
except that it had to be evils, he was not 
empowered to carry on any other kind of 
business. 

98 



The Last Booli of Wonder 

There was no evil, he told me, that was 
not negotiable there; no evil the old man 
knew had ever been taken away in despair 
from his shop. A man might have to wait 
and come back again next day, and next 
day and the day after, paying twenty francs 
each time, but the old man had the addresses 
of his clients and shrewdly knew their needs, 
and soon the right two met and eagerly 
changed their commodities. ''Commodities" 
was the old man's terrible word, said with a 
gruesome smack of his heavy lips, for he 
took a pride in his business and evils to him 
were goods. 

I learned from him in ten minutes very 
much of human nature, more than I have 
ever learned from any other man; I learned 
from him that a man's own evil is to him the 
worst thing that there is or could be, and 
that an evil so unbalances all men's minds 
that they always seek for extremes in that 
small grim shop. A woman that had no 
children had exchanged with an impover- 
ished half-maddened creature with twelve. 
On one occasion a man had exchanged wis- 
dom for folly. 

"Why on earth did he do that?" I said. 

99 



The Last Book of Wonder 

"None of my business," the old man 
answered in his heavy indolent way. He 
merely took his twenty francs from each 
and ratified the agreement in the little room 
at the back opening out of the shop where 
his clients do business. Apparently the 
man that had parted with wisdom had left 
the shop upon the tips of his toes with a 
happy though foolish expression all over his 
face, but the other went thoughtfully away 
wearing a troubled and very puzzled look. 
Almost always it seemed they did business 
in opposite evils. 

But the thing that puzzled me most in 
all my talks with that unwieldy man, the 
thing that puzzles me still, is that none that 
had once done business in that shop ever 
returned again; a man might come day after 
day for many weeks, but once do business 
and he never returned; so much the old man 
told me, but when I asked him why, he only 
muttered that he did not know. 

It was to discover the wherefore of this 
strange thing and for no other reason at all 
that I determined myself to do business 
sooner or later in the little room at the back 
of that mysterious shop, I determined to 

100 



The Last Book of Wonder 

exchange some very trivial evil for some 
evil equally slight, to seek for myself an 
advantage so very small as scarcely to give 
Fate as it were a grip, for I deeply distrusted 
these bargains, knowing well that man has 
never yet benefited by the marvellous and 
that the more miraculous" his advantage 
appears to be the more securely and tightly 
do the gods or the witches catch him. In 
a few days more I was going back to Eng- 
land and I was beginning to fear that I 
should be sea-sick : this fear of sea-sickness, 
not the actual malady but only the mere 
fear of it, I decided to exchange for a suitably 
little evil. I did* not know with whom I 
should be deahng, who in reality was the 
head of the firm (one never does when 
shopping) but I decided that neither Jew 
nor Devil could make very much on so small 
a bargain as that. 

I told the old man my project, and he 
scoffed at the smallness of my commodity 
trying to urge me to some darker bargain, 
but could not move me from my purpose. 
And then he told me tales with a somewhat 
boastful air of the big business, the great 
bargains that had passed through his hands. 

101 



The Last Book of Wonder 

A man had once run in there to try and 
exchange death, he had swallowed poison 
by accident and had only twelve hours to 
live. That sinister old man had been able 
to oblige him. A client was willing to ex- 
change the commodity. 

"But what did he give in exchange for 
death?" I said. 

"Life," said that grim old man with a 
furtive chuckle. 

"It must have been a horrible life," I 
said. 

"That was not my affair," the proprietor 
said, lazily rattling together as he spoke a 
little pocketful of twenty-franc pieces. 

Strange business I watched in that shop 
for the next few days, the exchange of odd 
commodities, and heard strange mutterings 
in corners amongst couples who presently 
rose and went to the back room, the old man 
following to ratify. 

Twice a day for a week I paid my twenty 
francs, watching life with its great needs 
and its little needs morning and afternoon 
spread out before me in all its wonderful 
variety. 

And one day I met a comfortable man 

102 



The Last Book of Wonder 

with only a little need, he seemed to have 
the very evil I wanted. He always feared 
the lift was going to break. I knew too 
much of hydrauHcs to fear things as silly as 
that, but it was not my business to cure 
his ridiculous fear. Very few words were 
needed to convince him that mine was the evil 
for him, he never crossed the sea, and I on 
the other hand could always walk upstairs, 
and I also felt at the time, as many must 
feel in that shop, that so absurd a fear could 
never trouble me. And yet at times it is 
almost the curse of my hfe. When we both 
had signed the parchment in the spidery 
back room and the old man had signed and 
ratified (for which we had to pay him fifty 
francs each) I went back to my hotel, and 
there I saw the deadly thing in the basement. 
They asked me if I would go upstairs in the 
lift, from force of habit I risked it, and I 
held my breath all the way and clenched my 
hands. Nothing will induce me to try such 
a journey again. I would sooner go up to 
my room in a balloon. And why? Because 
if a balloon goes wrong you have a chance, 
it may spread out into a parachute after it 
has burst, it may catch in a tree, a hundred 

103 



The Last BooJi of Wonder 

and one things may happen, but if the lift 
falls down its shaft you are done. As for 
sea-sickness I shall never be sick again, I 
cannot tell you why except that I know 
that it is so. 

And the shop in which I made this remark- 
able, bargain the shop to which none return 
when their business is done: I set out for it 
next day. Blindfold I could have found 
my way to the unfashionable quarter out 
of which a mean street runs, where you take 
the alley at the end, whence runs the cul de 
sac where the queer shop stood. A shop 
with pillars, fluted and painted red, stands 
on its near side, its other neighbour is a 
low-class jeweller's with little silver brooches 
in the window. In such incongruous com- 
pany stood the shop with beams with its 
walls painted green. 

In half an hour I stood in the cul de sac 
to which I had gone twice a day for the last 
week, I found the shop with the ugly painted 
pillars and the jeweller that sold brooches, 
but the green house with the three beams 
was gone. 

Pulled down, you will say, although in a 
single night. That can never be the answer 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

to the mystery, for the house of the fluted 
pillars painted on plaster and the low-class 
jeweller's shop with its silver brooches (all 
of which I could identify one by one) were 
standing side by side. 



105 



A Story of Land 
and Sea 




t is written in the first Book 
of Wonder how Captain Shard 
of the bad ship Desperate 
Lark, having looted the sea- 
coast city Bombasharna, re- 
tired from active Hfe; and 
resigning piracy to younger men, with the 
good will of the North and South Atlantic, 
settled down with a captured queen on his 
floating island. 

Sometimes he sank a ship for the sake of 
old times but he no longer hovered along the 
trade-routes; and timid merchants watched 
for other men. 

It was not age that caused him to leave 
his romantic profession; nor un worthiness 
of its traditions, nor gun-shot wound, nor 
drink; but grim necessity and force majeure. 

106 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Five navies were after him. How he gave 
them the shp one day in the Mediterranean, 
how he fought with the Arabs, how a ship's 
broadside was heard in Lat. 23 N. Long. 4 E. 
for the first time and the last, with other 
things unknown to Admiralties, I shall pro- 
ceed to tell. 

He had had his fling, had Shard, captain 
of pirates, and all his merry men wore 
pearls in their ear-rings; and now the Eng- 
lish fleet was after him under full sail along 
the coast of Spain with a good North wind 
behind them. They were not gaining 
much on Shard's rakish craft, the bad ship 
Desperate Lark, yet they were closer than 
was to his liking, and they interfered with 
business. 

For a day and a night they had chased 
him, when off Cape St. Vincent at about 
six a. m. Shard took that step that decided 
his retirement from active Ufe, he turned 
for the Mediterranean. Had he held on 
Southwards down the African coast it is 
doubtful whether in face of the interference 
of England, Russia, France, Denmark and 
Spain, he could have made piracy pay; but 
in turning for the Mediterranean he took 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

what we may call the penultimate step of 
his Hfe which meant for him setthng down. 
There were three great courses of action 
invented by Shard in his youth, upon which 
he pondered by day and brooded by night, 
consolations in all his dangers, secret even 
from his men, three means of escape as he 
hoped from any peril that might meet him 
on the sea. One of these was the floating 
island that the Book of Wonder tells of, 
another was so fantastic that we may doubt 
if even the brilliant audacity of Shard could 
ever have found it practicable, at least he 
never tried it so far as is known in that tav- 
ern by the sea in which I glean my news, 
and the third he determined on carrying 
out as he turned that morning for the Med- 
iterranean. True he might yet have prac- 
tised piracy in spite of the step that he took, 
a little later when the seas grew quiet, but 
that penultimate step was like that small 
house in the country that the business man 
has his eye on, hke some snug investment 
put away for old age, there are certain final 
courses in men's lives which after taking 
they never go back to business. 
He turned then for the Mediterranean 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

with the English fleet behind him, and his 
men wondered. 

What madness was this, — muttered Bill 
the Boatswain in Old Frank's only ear, — 
with the French fleet waiting in the GuK of 
Lyons and the Spaniards all the way be- 
tween Sardinia and Tunis: for they knew 
the Spaniards' ways And they naade a 
deputation and waited upon Captain Shard, 
all of them sober and wearing their costly 
clothes, and they said that the Mediterra- 
nean was a trap, and all he said was that the 
North wind should hold. And the crew 
said they were done. 

So they entered the Mediterranean and 
the EngUsh fleet came up and closed the 
straits. And Shard went tacking along 
the Moroccan coast with a dozen frigates 
behind him. And the North wind grew 
in strength. And not till evening did he 
speak to his crew, and then he gathered 
them all together except the man at the 
hehn, and poHtely asked them to come 
down to the hold. And there he showed 
them six immense steel axles and a dozen 
low iron wheels of enormous width which 
none had seen before; and he told his crew 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

how all unknown to the world his keel had 
been specially fitted for these same axles 
and wheels, and how he meant soon to sail 
to the wide Atlantic again, though not by 
the way of the straits. And when they 
heard the name of the Atlantic all his 
merry men cheered, for they looked on the 
Atlantic as a wide safe sea. 

And night came down and Captain Shard 
sent for his diver. With the sea getting up 
it was hard work for the diver, but by mid- 
night things were done to Shard's satis- 
faction, and the diver said that of all the 
jobs he had done — but finding no apt com- 
parison, and being in need of a drink, silence 
fell on him and soon sleep, and his comrades 
carried him away to his hammock. All the 
next day the chase went on with the English 
well in sight, for Shard had lost time over- 
night with his wheels and axles, and the 
danger of meeting the Spaniards increased 
every hour; and evening came when every 
minute seemed dangerous, yet they still 
went tacking on towards the East where 
they knew the Spaniards must be. 

And at last they sighted their topsails 
right ahead, and still Shard went on. It 

no 



The Last Book of Wonder 

was a close thing, but night was coming on, 
and the Union Jack which he hoisted helped 
Shard with the Spaniards for the last few 
anxious minutes, though it seemed to anger 
the English, but as Shard said, "There's no 
pleasing everyone," and then the twilight 
shivered into darkness. 

"Hard to starboard," said Captain 
Shard. 

The North wind which had risen all day 
was now blowing a gale. I do not know 
what part of the coast Shard steered for, 
but Shard knew, for the coasts of the world 
were to him what Margate is to some of us. 

At a place where the desert rolling up 
from mystery and from death, yea, from 
the heart of Africa, emerges upon the 
sea, no less grand than her, no less terrible, 
even there they sighted the land quite close, 
almost in darkness. Shard ordered every 
man to the hinder part of the ship and all 
the ballast too; and soon the Desperate 
Lark, her prow a little high out of the water, 
doing her eighteen knots before the wind, 
struck a sandy beach and shuddered, she 
heeled over a little, then righted herself, and 
slowly headed into the interior of Africa. 
Ill 



The Last Book of Wonder 

The men would have given three cheers, 
but after the first Shard silenced them and, 
steering the ship himself, he made them a 
short speech while the broad wheels pounded 
slowly over the African sand, doing barely 
five knots in a gale. The perils of the sea 
he said had been greatly exaggerated. 
Ships had been saihng the sea for hundreds 
of years and at sea you knew what to do, 
but on land this was different. They were 
on land now and they were not to forget it. 
At sea you might make as much noise as 
you pleased and no harm was done, but on 
land anything might happen. One of the 
perils of the land that he instanced was that 
of hanging. For every hundred men that 
they hung on land, he said, not more than 
twenty would be hung at sea. The men 
were to sleep at their guns. They would 
not go far that night; for the risk of being 
wrecked at night was another danger pecul- 
iar to the land, while at sea you might sail 
from set of sun till dawn : yet it was essential 
to get out of sight of the sea for if anyone 
knew they were there they'd have cavalry 
after them. And he had sent back Smer- 
drak (a young lieutenant of pirates) to 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

cover their tracks where they came up from 
the sea. And the merry men vigorously 
nodded their heads though they did not dare 
to cheer, and presently Smerdrak came 
running up and they threw him a rope by 
the stern. And when they had done fifteen 
knots they anchored, and Captain Shard 
gathered his men about him and, standing 
by the land-wheel in the bows, under the 
large and clear Algerian stars, he explained 
his system of steering. There was not 
much to be said for it, he had with consid- 
erable ingenuity detached and pivoted the 
portion of the keel that held the leading 
axle and could move it by chains which 
were controlled from the land-wheel, thus 
the front pair of wheels could be deflected 
at will, but only very slightly, and they 
afterwards found that in a hundred yards 
they could only turn their ship four yards 
from her course. But let not captains of 
comfortable battleships, or owners even of 
yachts, criticise too harshly a man who was 
not of their time and who knew not modern 
contrivances; it should be remembered also 
that Shard was no longer at sea. His 



113 



The Last Book of Wonder 

steering may have been clumsy but he did 
what he could. 

When the use and limitations of his 
land-wheel had been made clear to his men, 
Shard bade them all turn in except those on 
watch. Long before dawn he woke them 
and by the very first gleam of light they got 
their ship under way, so that when those 
two fleets that had made so sure of Shard 
closed in like a great crescent on the Al- 
gerian coast there was no sign to see of the 
Desperate Lark either on sea or land; and 
the flags of the Admiral's ship broke out 
into a hearty English oath. 

The gale blew for three days and, Shard 
using more sail by daylight, they scudded 
over the sands at little less than ten knots, 
though on the report of rough water ahead 
(as the lookout man called rocks, low hills 
or uneven surface before he adapted him- 
self to his new surroundings) the rate was 
much decreased. Those were long summer 
days and Shard who was anxious while the 
wind held good to outpace the rumour of 
his own appearance sailed for nineteen hours 
a day, Ijdng to at ten in the evening and 



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The Last Book of Wonder 

hoisting sail again at three a. m. when it 
first began to be fight. 

In those three days he did five hundred 
miles; then the wind dropped to a breeze 
though it still blew from the North, and for 
a week they did no more than two knots 
an hour. The merry men began to mur- 
mur then. Luck had distinctly favoured 
Shard at first for it sent him at ten knots 
through the only populous districts weU 
ahead of crowds except those who chose to 
run, and the cavalry were away on a local 
raid. As for the runners they soon dropped 
off when Shard pointed his cannon though 
he did not dare to fire, up there near the 
coast; for much as he jeered at the intel- 
Ugence of the English and Spanish Admirals 
in not suspecting his manoeuvre, the only 
one as he said that was possible in the cir- 
cumstances, yet he knew that cannon had 
an obvious sound which would give his 
secret away to the weakest mind. Cer- 
tainly luck had befriended him, and when 
it did so no longer he made out of the occa- 
sion all that could be made; for instance 
while the wind held good he had never 
missed opportunities to revictual, if he 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

passed by a village its pigs and poultry 
were his, and whenever he passed by water 
he filled his tanks to the brim, and now that 
he could only do two knots he sailed all 
night with a man and a lantern before him : 
thus in that week he did close on four 
hundred miles while another man would 
have anchored at night and have missed five 
or six hours out of the twenty-four. Yet 
his men murmured. Did he think the wind 
would last for ever, they said. And Shard 
only smoked . It was c lear that he was think- 
ing, and thinking hard. "But what is he 
thinking about?" said Bill to Bad Jack. 
And Bad Jack answered: "He may think 
as hard as he likes but thinking won't get us 
out of the Sahara if this wind were to drop." 
And towards the end of that week Shard 
went to his chart-room and laid a new course 
for his ship a httle to the East and towards 
cultivation. And one day towards evening 
they sighted a village, and twilight came 
and the wind dropped altogether. Then 
the murmurs of the merry men grew to oaths 
and nearly to mutiny. "Where were 
they now?" they asked, and were they 
being treated hke poor honest men ? 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

Shard quieted them by asking what they 
wished to do themselves and when no one 
had any better plan than going to the vil- 
lagers and saying that they had been blown 
out of their course by a storm, Shard un- 
folded his scheme to them. 

Long ago he had heard how they drove 
carts with oxen in Africa, oxen were very 
numerous in these parts wherever there was 
any cultivation, and for this reason when 
the wind had begun to drop he had laid his 
course for the village: that night the moment 
it was dark they were to drive off fifty yoke 
of oxen; by midnight they must all be yoked 
to the bows and then away they would go 
at a good round gallop. 

So fine a plan as this astonished the men 
and they all apologised for their want of 
faith in Shard, shaking hands with him 
every one and spitting on their hands before 
they did so in token of good will. 

The raid that night succeeded admirably, 
but ingenious as Shard was on land, and a 
past-master at sea, yet it must be admitted 
that lack of experience in this class of sea- 
manship led him to make a mistake, a 
shght one it is true, and one that a little 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

practice would have prevented altogether: 
the oxen could not gallop. Shard swore at 
them, threatened them mth his pistol, said 
they should have no food, and all to no avail : 
that night and as long as they pulled the 
bad ship Desperate Lark they did one knot 
an hour and no more. Shard's failures like 
everything that came his way were used as 
stones in the edifice of his future success, 
he went at once to his chart-room and 
worked out all his calculations anew. 

The matter of the oxen's pace made pur- 
suit impossible to avoid. Shard therefore 
countermanded his order to his lieutenant 
to cover the tracks in the sand, and the 
Desperate Lark plodded on into the Sahara 
on her new course trusting to her guns. 

The village was not a large one and the 
little crowd that was sighted astern next 
morning disappeared after the first shot 
from the cannon in the stern. At first 
Shard made the oxen wear rough iron bits, 
another of his mistakes, and strong bits too. 
"For if they run away," he had said, "we 
might as well be driving before a gale and 
there's no saying where we'd find ourselves," 
but after a day or two he found that the bits 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

were no good and, like the practical man he 
was, immediately corrected his mistake. 

And now the crew sang merry songs all 
day bringing out mandolins and clarionets 
and cheering Captain Shard. All were 
jolly except the captain himself whose face 
was moody and perplexed; he alone expected 
to hear more of those villagers; and the 
oxen were drinking up the water every day, 
he alone feared that there was no more to 
be had, and a very unpleasant fear that is 
when your ship is becalmed in a desert. 
For over a week they went on like this doing 
ten knots a day and the music and singing 
got on the captain's nerves, but he dared 
not teU his men what the trouble was. And 
then one day the oxen drank up the last of 
the water. And Lieutenant Smerdrak 
came and reported the fact. 

"Give them rum," said Shard, and he 
cursed the oxen. "What is good enough 
for me," he said, "should be good enough 
for them," and he swore that they should 
have rum. 

"Aye, aye, sir," said the young lieutenant 
of pirates. 

Shard should not be judged by the orders 

119 



The Last Book of Wonder 

he gave that day, for nearly a fortnight he 
had watched the doom that was coming 
slowly towards him, discipline cut him off 
from anyone that might have shared his 
fear and discussed it, and all the while he 
had had to navigate his ship, which even at 
sea is an arduous responsibility. These 
things had fretted the calm of that clear 
judgment that had once baffled five navies. 
Therefore he cursed the oxen and ordered 
them rum, and Smerdrak had said "Aye, 
aye, sir," and gone below. 

Towards sunset Shard was standing on 
the poop, thinking of death; it would not 
come to him by thirst; mutiny first, he 
thought. The oxen were refusing rum for 
the last time, and the men were beginning 
to eye Captain Shard in a very ominous 
way, not muttering, but each man looking 
at him with a sidelong look of the eye as 
though there were only one thought among 
them all that had no need of words. A 
score of geese like a long letter "V" were 
crossing the evening sky, they slanted their 
necks and all went twisting downwards 
somewhere about the horizon. Captain 
Shard rushed to his chart-room, and pres- 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

ently the men came in at the door with Old 
Frank in front looking awkward and twist- 
ing his cap in his hand. 

"What is it?" said Shard as though noth- 
ing were wrong. 

Then Old Frank said what he had come 
to say: "We want to know what you be 
going to do." 

And the men nodded grimly. 

"Get water for the oxen," said Captain 
Shard, "as the swine won't have rum, and 
they'll have to work for it, the lazy beasts. 
Up anchor!" 

And at the word water a look came into 
their faces like when some wanderer suddenly 
thinks of home. 

"Water!" they said. 

"Why not?" said Captain Shard. And 
none of them ever knew that but for those 
geese, that slanted their necks and suddenly 
twisted downwards, they would have found 
no water that night nor ever after, and the 
Sahara would have taken them as she has 
taken so many and shall take so many more. 
All that night they followed their new 
course: at dawn they found an oasis and 
the oxen drank. 

121 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And here, on this green acre or so with 
its pahn-trees and its well, beleaguered by 
thousands of miles of desert and holding 
out through the ages, here they decided to 
stay: for those who have been without 
water for a while in one of Africa's deserts 
come to have for that simple fluid such a 
regard as you, reader, might not easily 
credit. And here each man chose a site 
where he would build his hut, and settle 
down, and marry perhaps, and even forget 
the sea; when Captain Shard having filled 
his tanks and barrels peremptorily ordered 
them to weigh anchor. There was much 
dissatisfaction, even some grumbhng, but 
when a man has twice saved his fellows 
from death by the sheer freshness of his 
mind they come to have a respect for his 
judgment that is not shaken by trifles. It 
must be remembered that in the affair of 
the dropping of the wind and again when 
they ran out of water these men were at 
their wits* end: so was Shard on the last 
occasion, but that they did not know. All 
this Shard knew, and he chose this occasion 
to strengthen the reputation that he had 
in the minds of the men of that bad ship by 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

explaining to them his motives, which usu- 
ally he kept secret. The oasis he said must 
be a port of call for all the travellers within 
hundreds of miles : how many men did you 
see gathered together in any part of the 
world where there was a drop of whiskey to 
be had! And water here was rarer than 
whiskey in decent countries and, such was 
the pecuharity of the Arabs, even more 
precious. Another thing he pointed out 
to them, the Arabs were a singularly inquis- 
itive people and if they came upon a ship 
in the desert they would probably talk 
about it; and the world having a wickedly 
mahcious tongue would never construe in 
its proper light their difference with the 
EngHsh and Spanish fleets, but would 
merely side with the strong against the 
weak. 

And the men sighed, and sang the capstan 
song and hoisted the anchor and yoked the 
oxen up, and away they went doing their 
steady knot, which nothing could increase. 
It may be thought strange that with all 
sail furled in dead calm and while the oxen 
rested they should have cast anchor at all. 
But custom is not easily overcome and long 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

survives its use. Rather enquire how many 
such useless customs we ourselves preserve: 
the flaps for instance to pull up the tops of 
hunting-boots though the tops no longer 
pull up, the bows on our evening shoes that 
neither tie nor untie. They said they felt 
safer that way and there was an end of it. 

Shard lay a course of South by West and 
they did ten knots that day, the next day 
they did seven or eight and Shard hove to. 
Here he intended to stop, they had huge 
supplies of fodder on board for the oxen, 
for his men he had a pig or so, plenty of 
poultry, several sacks of biscuits and ninety- 
eight oxen (for two were already eaten), and 
they were only twenty miles from water. 
Here he said they would stay till folks forgot 
their past, someone would invent something 
or some new thing would turn up to take 
folks' minds off them and the ships he had 
sunk: he forgot that there are men who are 
well paid to remember. 

Half way between him and the oasis he 
established a little depot where he buried 
his water-barrels. As soon as a barrel was 
empty he sent half a dozen men to roll it by 
turns to the depot. This they would do at 

124 



The Last Book of Wonder 

night, keeping hid by day, and next night 
they would push on to the oasis, fill the 
barrel and roll it back. Thus only ten 
miles away he soon had a store of water, 
unknown to the thirstiest native of Africa, 
from which he could safely replenish his 
tanks at will. He allowed his men to sing 
and even within reason to light fires. Those 
were jolly nights while the rum held out; 
sometimes they saw gazelles watching them 
curiously, sometimes a Hon went by over 
the sand, the sound of his roar added to 
their sense of the security of their ship; all 
round them level, immense lay the Sahara: 
"This is better than an Enghsh prison," 
said Captain Shard. 

And still the dead calm lasted, not even 
the sand whispered at night to little winds; 
and when the rum gave out and it looked 
like trouble, Shard reminded them what 
little use it had been to them when it was all 
they had and the oxen wouldn't look at it. 

And the days wore on with singing, and 
even dancing at times, and at nights round 
a cautious fire in a hollow of sand with only 
one man on watch they told tales of the sea. 
It was all a relief after arduous watches and 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

sleeping by the guns, a rest to strained 
nerves and eyes; and all agreed, for all that 
they missed their rum, that the best place 
for a ship like theirs was the land. 

This was in Latitude 23 North, Longi- 
tude 4 East, where, as I have said, a ship's 
broadside was heard for the first time and 
the last. It happened this way. 

They had been there several weeks and 
had eaten perhaps ten or a dozen oxen and 
all that while there had been no breath of 
wind and they had seen no one: when one 
morning about two bells when the crew 
were at breakfast the lookout man reported 
cavalry on the port side. Shard who had 
already surrounded his ship with sharpened 
stakes ordered all his men on board, the 
young trumpeter who prided himself on 
having picked up the ways of the land, 
sounded "Prepare to receive cavalry";. 
Shard sent a few men below with pikes to 
the lower port-holes, two more aloft with 
muskets, the rest to the guns, he changed 
the "grape" or "canister" with which the 
guns were loaded in case of surprise, for 
shot, cleared the decks, drew in ladders, and 
before the cavalry came within range every- 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

thing was ready for them. The oxen were 
always yoked in order that Shard could 
manoeuvre his ship at a moment's notice. 

When first sighted the cavalry were trot- 
ting but they were coming on now at a slow 
canter. Arabs in white robes on good 
horses. Shard estimated that there were 
two or three hundred of them. At sixty 
yards Shard opened with one gun, he had 
had the distance measured, but had never 
practised for fear of being heard at the oasis : 
the shot went high. The next one fell short 
and ricochetted over the Arabs' heads. 
Shard had the range then and by the time 
the ten remaining guns of his broadside were 
given the same elevation as that of his sec- 
ond gun the Arabs had come to the spot 
where the last shot pitched. The broad- 
side hit the horses, mostly low, and rico- 
chetted on amongst them; one cannon-ball 
striking a rock at the horses' feet shattered 
it and sent fragments flying amongst the 
Arabs with the peculiar scream of things set 
free by projectiles from their motionless 
harmless state, and the cannon-ball went 
on with them with a great howl, this shot 
alone killed three men. 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

"Very satisfactory/' said Shard rubbing 
his chin. "Load with grape," he added 
sharply. 

The broadside did not stop the Arabs nor 
even reduce their speed but they crowded 
in closer together as though for company 
in their time of danger, which they should 
not have done. They were four hundred 
yards off now, three hundred and fifty; and 
then the muskets began, for the two men in 
the crow's-nest had thirty loaded muskets 
besides a few pistols, the muskets all stood 
round them leaning against the rail; they 
picked them up and fired them one by one. 
Every shot told, but still the Arabs came on. 
They were galloping now. It took some 
time to load the guns in those days. Three 
hundred yards, two hundred and fifty, men 
dropping all the way, two hundred yards; 
Old Frank for all his one ear had terrible 
eyes; it was pistols now, they had fired all 
their muskets; a hundred and fifty; Shard 
had marked the fifties with little white 
stones. Old Frank and Bad Jack up aloft 
felt pretty uneasy when they saw the Arabs 
had come to that little white stone, they 
both missed their shots. 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

"All ready?" said Captain Shard. 

"Aye, aye, sir," said Smerdrak. 

"Right," said Captain Shard raising a 
finger. 

A hundred and fifty yards is a bad range 
at which to be caught by grape (or "case" as 
we call it now), the gunners can hardly miss 
and the charge has time to spread. Shard 
estimated afterwards that he got thirty 
Arabs by that broadside alone and as many 
horses. 

There were close on two hundred of them 
still on their horses, yet the broadside of 
grape had unsettled them, they surged 
round the ship but seemed doubtful what to 
do. They carried swords and scimitars in 
their hands, though most had strange long 
muskets slung behind them, a few unslung 
them and began firing wildly. They could 
not reach Shard's merry men with their 
swords. Had it not been for that broadside 
that took them when it did they might have 
climbed up from their horses and carried the 
bad ship by sheer force of numbers, but 
they would have had to have been very 
steady, and the broadside spoiled all that. 
Their best course was to have concentrated 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

all their efforts in setting fire to the ship but 
this they did not attempt. Part of them 
swarmed all round the ship brandishing 
their swords and looking vainly for an easy 
entrance; perhaps they expected a door, 
they were not sea-faring people; but their 
leaders were evidently set on driving off the 
oxen not dreaming that the Desperate Lark 
had other means of traveUing. And this to 
some extent they succeeded in doing. 
Thirty they drove off, cutting the traces, 
twenty they killed on the spot with their 
scimitars though the bow gun caught them 
twice as they did their work, and ten more 
were unluckily killed by Shard's bow gun. 
Before they could fire a third time from the 
bows they all galloped away, firing back at 
the oxen with their muskets and kiUing 
three more, and what troubled Shard more 
than the loss of his oxen was the way that 
they manoeuvred, galloping off just when 
the bow gun was ready and riding off by the 
port bow where the broadside could not get 
them, which seemed to him to show more 
knowledge of guns than they could have 
learned on that bright morning. What, 
thought Shard to himself, if they should 

130 



The Last Book of Wonder 

bring big guns against the Desperate Lark! 
And the mere thought of it made him rail 
at Fate. But the merry men all cheered 
when they rode away. Shard had only 
twenty-two oxen left, and then a score or so 
of the Arabs dismounted while the rest rode 
further on leading their horses. And the 
dismounted men lay down on the port bow 
behind some rocks two hundred yards away 
and began to shoot at the oxen. Shard had 
just enough of them left to manoeuvre his 
ship with an effort and he turned his ship 
a few points to the starboard so as to get a 
broadside at the rocks. But grape was of 
no use here as the only way he could get an 
Arab was by hitting one of the rocks with 
shot behind which an Arab was lying, and 
the rocks were not easy to hit except by 
chance, and as often as he manoeuvred his 
ship the Arabs changed their ground. This 
went on all day while the mounted Arabs 
hovered out of range watching what Shard 
would do; and all the while the oxen were 
growing fewer, so good a mark were they, 
until only ten were left, and the ship could 
manoeuvre no longer. But then they aU 
rode off. 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

The merry men were delighted, they cal- 
culated that one way and another they had 
unhorsed a hundred Arabs and on board 
there had been no more than one man 
wounded: Bad Jack had been hit in the 
wrist; probably by a bullet meant for the 
men at the guns, for the Arabs were firing 
high. They had captured a horse and had 
found quaint weapons on the bodies of the 
dead Arabs and an interesting kind of 
tobacco. It was evening now and they 
talked over the fight, made jokes about their 
luckier shots, smoked their new tobacco and 
sang; altogether it was the j oiliest evening 
they'd had. But Shard alone on the quar- 
ter-deck paced to and fro pondering, brood- 
ing and wondering. He had chopped off 
Bad Jack's wounded hand and given him a 
hook out of store, for captain does doctor 
upon these occasions and Shard, who was 
ready for most things, kept half a dozen or 
so of neat new hmbs, and of course a chopper. 
Bad Jack had gone below swearing a little 
and said he'd he down for a bit, the men 
were smoking and singing on the sand, and 
Shard was there alone. The thought that 
troubled Shard was : What would the Arabs 

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The, Last Book of Wonder 

do? They did not look like men to go 
away for nothing. And at back of all his 
thoughts was one that reiterated guns, 
guns, guns. He argued with himself that 
they could not drag them all that way on 
the sand, that the Desperate Lark was not 
worth it, that they had given it up. Yet 
he knew in his heart that that was what 
they would do. He knew there were 
fortified towns in Africa, and as for its being 
worth it, he knew that there was no pleas- 
ant thing left now to those defeated men 
except revenge, and if the Desperate Lark 
had come over the sand why not guns ? He 
knew that the ship could never hold out 
against guns and cavalry, a week perhaps, 
two weeks, even three : what difference did it 
make how long it was, and the men sang: 

Away we go. 

Oho, Oho, Oho, 
A drop of rum for you and me 
And the world's as round as the letter O 
And round it runs the sea. 

A melancholy settled down on Shard. 
About sunset Lieutenant Smerdrak came 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

up for orders. Shard ordered a trench to 
be dug along the port side of the ship. The 
men wanted to sing and grumbled at having 
to dig, especially as Shard never mentioned 
his fear of guns, but he fingered his pistols 
and in the end Shard had his way. No one 
on board could shoot like Captain Shard. 
That is often the way with captains of pirate 
ships, it is a difficult position to hold. Dis- 
cipline is essential to those that have the 
right to fly the skuU-and-cross-bones, and 
Shard was the man to enforce it. It was 
starlight by the time the trench was dug to 
the captain's satisfaction and the men that 
it was to protect when the worst came to 
the worst swore all the time as they dug. 
And when it was finished they clamoured 
to make a feast on some of the killed oxen, 
and this Shard let them do. And they Ut 
a huge fire for the first time, burning abun- 
dant scrub, they thinking that Arabs daren't 
return, Shard knowing that concealment 
was now useless. All that night they 
feasted and sang, and Shard sat up in his 
chart-room making his plans. 

When morning came they rigged up the 
cutter as they called the captured horse and 

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The Last Book o/ Wonder 

told off her crew. As there were only two 
men that could ride at all these became the 
crew of the cutter. Spanish Dick and Bill 
the Boatswain were the two. 

Shard's orders were that turn and turn 
about they should take command of the 
cutter and cruise about five miles off to the 
North East all the day but at night they 
were to come in. And they fitted the horse 
up with a flagstaff in front of the saddle so 
that they could signal from her, and carried 
an anchor behind for fear she should run 
away. 

And as soon as Spanish Dick had ridden 
off Shard sent some men to roll all the bar- 
rels back from the depot where they were 
buried in the sand, with orders to watch the 
cutter all the time and, if she signalled, to 
return as fast as they could. 

They buried the Arabs that day, remov- 
ing their water-bottles and any provisions 
they had, and that night they got all the 
water-barrels in, and for days nothing hap- 
pened. One event of extraordinary impor- 
tance did indeed occur, the wind got up one 
day, but it was due South, and as the oasis 
lay to the North of them and beyond that 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

they might pick up the camel track Shard 
decided to stay where he was. If it had 
looked to him like lasting Shard might have 
hoisted sail but it dropped at evening as he 
knew it would, and in any case it was not 
the wind he wanted. And more days went 
by, two weeks without a breeze. The dead 
oxen would not keep and they had had to 
kill three more, there were only seven left 
now. 

Never before had the men been so long 
without rimi. And Captain Shard had 
doubled the watch besides making two more 
men sleep at the guns. They had tired of 
their simple games, and most of their songs, 
and their tales that were never true were no 
longer new. And then one day the monot- 
ony of the desert came down upon them. 

There is a fascination in the Sahara, a day 
there is dehghtful, a week is pleasant, a fort- 
night is a matter of opinion, but it was run- 
ning into months. The men were perfectly 
polite but the boatswain wanted to know 
when Shard thought of moving on. It was 
an unreasonable question to ask of the cap- 
tain of any ship in a dead calm in a desert, 
but Shard said he would set a course and let 

X36 



The Last Book of Wonder 

him know in a day or two. And a day or 
two went by over the monotony of the 
Sahara, who for monotony is unequalled by 
all the parts of the earth. Great marshes 
cannot equal it, nor plains of grass nor the 
sea, the Sahara alone lies unaltered by the 
seasons, she has no altering surface, no 
flowers to fade or grow, year in year out she 
is changeless for hundreds and hundreds of 
miles. And the boatswain came again and 
took off his cap and asked Captain Shard to 
be so kind as to tell them about his new 
course. Shard said he meant to stay until 
they had eaten three more of the oxen as 
they could only take three of them in the 
hold, there were only six left now. But 
what if there was no wind, the boatswain 
said. And at that moment the faintest 
breeze from the North ruffled the boat- 
swain's forelock as he stood with his cap in 
his hand. 

"Don't talk about the wind to m^," said 
Captain Shard: and Bill was a little fright- 
ened for Shard's mother had been a gipsy. 

But it was only a breeze astray, a trick of 
the Sahara. And another week went by 
and they ate two more oxen. 

137 



The Last Book of Wonder 

They obeyed Captain Shard ostenta- 
tiously now but they wore ominous looks. 
Bill came again and Shard answered him in 
Romany. 

Things were Uke this one hot Sahara 
morning when the cutter signalled. The 
lookout man told Shard and Shard read the 
message, "Cavalry astern" it read, and 
then a little later she signalled," With guns." 

"Ah," said Captain Shard. 

One ray of hope Shard had; the flags on 
the cutter fluttered. For the first time for 
five weeks a Ught breeze blew from the 
North, very Ught, you hardly felt it. 
Spanish Dick rode in and anchored his horse 
to starboard and the cavalry came on 
slowly from the port. 

Not till the afternoon did they come in 
sight, and all the while that Httle breeze was 
blowing. 

"One knot," said Shard at noon. "Two 
knots," he said at six bells and still it grew 
and the Arabs trotted nearer. By five 
o'clock the merry men of the bad ship 
Desperate Lark could make out twelve long 
old-fashioned guns on low wheeled carts 
dragged by horses and what looked like 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

lighter guns carried on camels. The wind 
was blowing a little stronger now. "Shall 
we hoist sail, sir?" said Bill. 

"Not yet," said Shard. 

By six o'clock the Arabs were just out- 
side the range of cannon and there they 
halted. Then followed an anxious hour or 
so, but the Arabs came no nearer. They 
evidently meant to wait till dark to bring 
their guns up. Probably they intended to 
dig a gun epauknent from which they could 
safely pound away at the ship. 

"We could do three knots," said Shard 
half to himself as he was walking up and 
down his quarter-deck with very fast short 
paces. And then the sun set and they 
heard the Arabs praying and Shard's merry 
men cursed at the top of their voices to 
show that they were as good men as they. 

The Arabs had come no nearer, waiting 
for night. They did not know how Shard 
was longing for it too, he was gritting his 
teeth and sighing for it, he even would have 
prayed, but that he feared that it might 
remind Heaven of him and his merry men. 

Night came and the stars. "Hoist sail," 
said Shard. The men sprang to their 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

places, they had had enough of that silent 
lonely spot. They took the oxen on board 
and let the great sails down, and like a lover 
coming from over sea, long dreamed of, 
long expected, like a lost friend seen again 
after many years, the North wind came into 
the pirates' sails. And before Shard could 
stop it a ringing Enghsh cheer went away 
to the wondering Arabs. 

They started off at three knots and soon 
they might have done four but Shard 
would not risk it at night. All night the 
wind held good, and doing three knots from 
ten to four they were far out of sight of the 
Arabs when daylight came. And then 
Shard hoisted more sail and they did four 
knots and by eight bells they were doing 
four and a half. The spirits of those vol- 
atile men rose high, and discipline became 
perfect. So long as there was wind in the 
sails and water in the tanks Captain Shard 
felt safe at least from mutiny. Great men 
can only be overthrown while their fortunes 
are at their lowest. Having failed to depose 
Shard when his plans were open to criticism 
and he himself scarce knew what to do next 
it was hardly likely they could do it now; 

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The Last Book o/ Wonder 

and whatever we think of his past and his 
way of living we cannot deny that Shard 
was among the great men of the world. 

Of defeat by the Arabs he did not feel so 
sure. It was useless to try to cover his 
tracks even if he had had time, the Arab 
cavalry could have picked them up any- 
where. And he was afraid of their camels 
with those light guns on board, he had heard 
they could do seven knots and keep it up 
most of the day and if as much as one shot 
struck the mainmast .... and Shard 
taking his mind off useless fears worked out 
on his chart when the Arabs were likely to 
overtake them. He told his men that the 
wind would hold good for a week, and, gipsy 
or no, he certainly knew as much about the 
wind as is good for a sailor to know. 

Alone in his chart-room he worked it out 
like this, mark two hours to the good for 
surprise and finding the tracks and delay in 
starting, say three hours if the guns were 
mounted in their epaulments, then the 
Arabs should start at seven. Supposing 
the camels go twelve hours a day at seven 
knots they would do eighty-four knots a day, 
while Shard doing three knots from ten to 

141 



The Last Book of Wonder 

four, and four knots the rest of the time, was 
doing ninety and actually gaining. But 
when it came to it he wouldn't risk more 
than two knots at night while the enemy 
were out of sight, for he rightly regarded 
anything more than that as dangerous when 
sailing on land at night, so he too did eighty- 
four knots a day. It was a pretty race. I 
have not troubled to see if Shard added up 
his figures wrongly or if he under-rated the 
pace of camels, but whatever it was the 
Arabs gained slightly, for on the fourth day 
Spanish Jack, five knots astern on what they 
called the cutter, sighted the camels a very 
long way off and signalled the fact to Shard 
They had left their cavalry behind as Shard 
supposed they would. The wind held good, 
they had still two oxen left and could always 
eat their ''cutter", and they had a fair, 
though not ample, supply of water, but the 
appearance of the Arabs was a blow to Shard 
for it showed him that there was no getting 
away from them, and of all things he 
dreaded guns. He made light of it to the 
men: said they would sink the lot before 
they had been in action half an hour: yet 
he feared that once the guns came up it was 

142 



The Last Book of Wonder 

only a question of time before his rigging 
was cut or his steering gear disabled. 

One point the Desperate Lark scored over 
the Arabs and a very good one too, darkness 
fell just before they could have sighted her 
and now Shard used the lantern ahead as he 
dared not do on the first night when the 
Arabs were close, and with the help of it 
managed to do three knots. The Arabs en- 
camped in the evening and the Desperate 
Lark gained twenty knots. But the next 
evening they appeared again and this time 
they saw the sails of the Desperate Lark. 

On the sixth day they were close. On the 
seventh they were closer. And then, a line 
of verdure across their bows, Shard saw the 
Niger River. 

Whether he knew that for a thousand 
miles it rolled its course through forest, 
whether he even knew that it was there at 
all; what his plans were, or whether he Uved 
from day to day like a man whose days are 
numbered he never told his men. Nor can 
I get an indication on this point from the 
talk that I hear from sailors in their cups in 
a certain tavern I know of. His face was 
expressionless, his mouth shut, and he held 

143 



The Last Book of Wonder 

his ship to her course. That evening they 
were up to the edge of the tree trunks and 
the Arabs camped and waited ten knots 
astern and the wind had sunk a httle. 

There Shard anchored a httle before sun- 
set and landed at once. At first he explored 
the forest a little on foot. Then he sent for 
Spanish Dick. They had slung the cutter 
on board some days ago when they found 
she could not keep up. Shard could not 
ride but he sent for Spanish Dick and told 
him he must take him as a passenger. So 
Spanish Dick slung him in front of the sad- 
dle ''before the mast" as Shard called it, for 
they still carried a mast on the front of the 
saddle, and away they galloped together. 
"Rough weather," said Shard, but he sur- 
veyed the forest as he went and the long and 
short of it was he found a place where the 
forest was less than half a mile thick and the 
Desperate Lark might get through: but 
twenty trees must be cut. Shard marked 
the trees himself, sent Spanish Dick right 
back to watch the Arabs and turned the 
whole of his crew on to those twenty trees. 
It was a frightful risk, the Desperate Lark 
was empty, with an enemy no more than 

144 



The Last Book of Wonder 

ten knots astern, but it was a moment for 
bold measures and Shard took the chance of 
being left without his ship in the heart of 
Africa in the hope of being repaid by escap- 
ing altogether. 

The men worked all night on those twenty 
trees, those that had no axes bored with 
bradawls and blasted, and then relieved 
those that had. 

Shard was indefatigable, he went from 
tree to tree showing exactly what way every 
one was to fall, and what was to be done 
with them when they were down. Some 
had to be cut down because their branches 
would get in the way of the masts, others 
because their trunks would be in the way of 
the wheels; in the case of the last the stumps 
had to be made smooth and low with saws 
and perhaps a bit of the trunk sawn off and 
rolled away. This was the hardest work 
they had. And they were all large trees, 
on the other hand had they been small there 
would have been many more of them and 
they could not have sailed in and out, some- 
times for hundreds of yards, without cutting 
any at all: and all this Shard calculated on 
doing if only there was time. 

145 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

The light before dawn came and it looked 
as if they would never do it at all. And 
then dawn came and it was all done but one 
tree, the hard part of the work had all been 
done in the night and a sort of final rush 
cleared everything up except that one huge 
tree. And then the cutter signalled the 
Arabs were moving. At dawn they had 
prayed, and now they had struck their 
camp. Shard at once ordered all his men 
to the ship except ten whom he left at the 
tree, they had some way to go and the Arabs 
had been moving some ten minutes before 
they got there. Shard took in the cutter 
which wasted five minutes, hoisted sail 
short-handed and that took five minutes 
more, and slowly got under way. 

The wind was dropping still and by the 
time the Desperate Lark had come to the 
edge of that part of the forest through which 
Shard had laid his course the Arabs were no 
more than five knots away. He had sailed 
East half a mile, which he ought to have 
done overnight so as to be ready, but he 
could not spare time or thought or men 
away from those twenty trees. Then 
Shard turned into the forest and the Arabs 

146 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

were dead astern. They hurried when they 
saw the Desperate Lark enter the forest. 

"Doing ten knots," said Shard as he 
watched them from the deck. The Des- 
perate Lark was doing no more than a knot 
and a haK for the wind was weak under the 
lee of the trees. Yet all went well for a 
while. The big tree had just come down 
some way ahead, and the ten men were saw- 
ing bits off the trunk. 

And then Shard saw a branch that he had 
not marked on the chart, it would just catch 
the top of the mainmast. He anchored at 
once and sent a hand aloft who sawed it half 
way through and did the rest with a pistol, 
and now the Arabs were only three knots 
astern. For a quarter of a mile Shard 
steered them through the forest till they 
came to the ten men and that bad big tree, 
another foot had yet to come off one corner 
of the stump for the wheels had to pass over 
it. Shard turned all hands on to the stump 
and it was then that the Arabs came within 
shot. But they had to unpack their gun. 
And before they had it mounted Shard was 
away. If they had charged things might 
have been different. When they saw the 

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The Last Book of Wonder 

Desperate Lark under way again the Arabs 
came on to within three hundred yards and 
there they mounted two guns. Shard 
watched them along his stern gun but would 
not fire. They were six hundred yards 
away before the Arabs could fire and then 
they fired too soon and both guns missed. 
And Shard and his merry men saw clear 
water only ten fathoms ahead. Then Shard 
loaded his stern gun with canister instead 
of shot and at the same moment the Arabs 
charged on their camels; they came gal- 
loping down through the forest waving long 
lances. Shard left the steering to Smerdrak 
and stood by the stern gun, the Arabs were 
within fifty yards and still Shard did not 
fire; he had most of his men in the stern 
with muskets beside him. Those lances 
carried on camels were altogether different 
from swords in the hands of horsemen, they 
could reach the men on deck. The men 
could see the horrible barbs on the lance- 
heads, they were almost at their faces when 
Shard fired, and at the same moment the 
Desperate Lark with her dry and sun- 
cracked keel in air on the high bank of the 
Niger fell forward Hke a diver. The gun 

148 



The Last Book of Wonder 

went off through the tree-tops, a wave came 
over the bows and swept the stern, the 
Desperate Lark wriggled and righted her- 
self, she was back in her element. 

The merry men looked at the wet decks 
and at their dripping clothes. "Water," 
they said almost wonderingly. 

The Arabs followed a little way through 
the forest but when they saw that they had 
to face a broadside instead of one stern gun 
and perceived that a ship afloat is less vul- 
nerable to cavalry even than when on shore, 
they abandoned ideas of revenge, and com- 
forted themselves with a text out of their 
sacred book which tells how in other days 
and other places our enemies shall suffer 
even as we desire. 

For a thousand miles with the flow of the 
Niger and the help of occasional winds, the 
Desperate Lark moved seawards. At first 
he sweeps East a little and then Southwards, 
till you come to Akassa and the open sea. 

I will not tell you how they caught fish 
and ducks, raided a village here and there 
and at last came to Akassa, for I have said 
much already of Captain Shard. Imagine 
them drawing nearer and nearer the sea, bad 

149 



The Last Book of Wonder 

men all, and yet with a feeling for something 
where we feel for our king, our country or 
our home, a feeling for something that 
burned in them not less ardently than our 
feelings in us, and that something the sea. 
Imagine them nearing it till sea birds ap- 
peared and they fancied they felt sea breezes 
and all sang songs again that they had not 
sung for weeks. Imagine them heaving at 
last on the salt Atlantic again. 

I have said much already of Captain 
Shard and I fear lest I shall weary you, 
my reader, if I tell you any more of so bad a 
man. I too at the top of a tower all alone 
am weary. 

And yet it is right that such a tale should 
be told. A journey almost due South from 
near Algiers to Akassa in a ship that we 
should call no more than a yacht. Let it be 
a stimulus to younger men. 

GUARANTEE TO THE READER 

Since writing down for your benefit, 
my reader, all this long tale that I heard in 
the tavern by the sea I have travelled in 
Algeria and Tunisia as well as in the Desert. 

150 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Much that I saw in those countries seems 
to throw doubt on the tale that the sailor 
told me. To begin with the Desert does 
not come within hundreds of miles of the 
coast and there are more mountains to cross 
than you would suppose, the Atlas moun- 
tains in particular. It is just possible Shard 
might have got through by El Cantara, 
following the camel road which is many 
centuries old; or he may have gone by 
Algiers and Bou Saada and through the 
mountain pass El Finita Dem, though that 
is a bad enough way for camels to go (let 
alone bullocks with a ship) for which reason 
the Arabs call it Finita Dem — the Path of 
Blood. 

I should not have ventured to give this 
story the publicity of print had the sailor 
been sober when he told it, for fear that he 
should have deceived you, my reader; but 
this was never the case with him as I took 
good care to ensure: ''in vino Veritas" is a 
sound old proverb, and I never had cause to 
doubt his word unless that proverb hes. 

If it should prove that he has deceived 
me, let it pass; but if he has been the means 
of deceiving you there are little things about 

151 



The Last Book of Wonder 

him that I know, the common gossip of that 
ancient tavern whose leaded bottle-glass 
windows watch the sea, which I will tell at 
once to every judge of my acquaintance, 
and it will be a pretty race to see which of 
them will hang him. 

Meanwhile, my reader, beheve the 
story, resting assured that if you are taken 
in the thing shall be a matter for the hang- 
man. 



152 



A Tale of 

the Equator 




e who is Sultan so remote to 
the East that his dominions 
were deemed fabulous in 
Babylon, whose name is a by- 
word for distance to-day in 
the streets of Bagdad, whose 
capital bearded travellers invoke by name 
in the gate at evening to gather hearers to 
their tales when the smoke of tobacco arises, 
dice rattle and taverns shine; even he in that 
very city made mandate, and said: "Let 
there be brought hither all my learned men 
that they may come before me and rejoice 
my heart with learning." 

Men ran and clarions sounded, and it was 
so that there came before the Sultan all of 
his learned men. And many were found 
wanting. But of those that were able to 
^ay acceptable things, ever after to be 
153 



The Last Book of Wonder 

named The Fortunate, one said that to the 
South of the Earth lay a Land — said Land 
was crowned with lotus — where it was 
summer in our winter days and where it was 
winter in summer. 

And when the Sultan of those most dis- 
tant lands knew that the Creator of All had 
contrived a device so vastly to his delight 
his merriment knew no bounds. On a 
sudden he spake and said, and this was the 
gist of his saying, that upon that line of 
boundary or hmit that divided the North 
from the South a palace be made, where in 
the Northern courts should summer be, 
while in the South was winter; so should he 
move from court to court according to his 
mood, and dally with the summer in the 
morning and spend the noon with snow. 
So the Sultan's poets were sent for and bade 
to tell of that city, foreseeing its splendour 
far away to the South and in the future of 
time; and some were found fortunate. And 
of those that were found fortunate and were 
crowned with flowers none earned more 
easily the Sultan's smile (on which long days 
depended) than he that foreseeing the city 
spake of it thus : 

154 



The Last Book of Wonder 

"In seven years and seven days, O Prop 
of Heaven, shall thy builders build it, thy 
palace that is neither North nor South, 
where neither summer nor winter is sole 
lord of the hours. White I see it, very vast, 
as a city, very fair, as a woman. Earth's 
wonder, with many windows, with thy 
princesses peering out at twilight; yea, I 
behold the bliss of the gold balconies, and 
hear a rustling down long galleries and the 
doves' coo upon its sculptured eaves. O 
Prop of Heaven, would that so fair a city 
were built by thine ancient sires, the chil- 
dren of the sun, that so might all men see it 
even to-day, and not the poets only, whose 
vision sees it so far away to the South and 
in the future of time. 

"O King of the Years, it shall stand mid- 
most on that line that divideth equally the 
North from the South and that parteth the 
seasons asunder as with a screen. On the 
Northern side when summer is in the North 
thy silken guards shall pace by dazzling 
walls while thy spearsmen clad in furs go 
round the South. But at the hour of noon 
in the midmost day of the year thy chamber- 
lain shall go down from his high place and 

155 



The Last Book of Wonder 

into the midmost court, and men with 
trmnpets shall go down behind him, and he 
shall utter a great cry at noon, and the men 
with trumpets shall cause their trumpets 
to blare, and the spearsmen clad in furs 
shall march to the North and thy silken 
guard shall take their place in the South, 
and summer shall leave the North and go 
to the South, and all the swallows shall rise 
and follow after. And alone in thine inner 
courts shall no change be, for they shall lie 
narrowly along that line that parteth the 
seasons in sunder and divideth the North 
from the South, and thy long gardens shall 
lie under them. 

"And in thy gardens shall spring always 
be, for spring lies ever at the marge of sum- 
mer; and autumn also shall always tint thy 
gardens, for autumn always flares at win- 
ter's edge, and those gardens shall lie apart 
between winter and summer. And there 
shall be orchards in thj^ garden, too, with all 
the burden of autumn on their boughs and 
all the blossom of spring. 

"Yea, I behold this palace, for we see 
future things; I see its white wall shine in 
the huge glare of midsummer, and the liz- 

156 



The Last Book of Wonder 

ards lying along it motionless in the sun, and 
men asleep in the noonday, and the butter- 
flies floating by, and birds of radiant plu- 
mage chasing marveUous moths; far off the 
forest and great orchids glorying there, and 
iridescent insects dancing round in the light. 
I see the wall upon the other side; the snow 
has come upon the battlements, the icicles 
have fringed them like frozen beards, a wild 
wind blowing out of lonely places and cry- 
ing to the cold fields as it blows has sent the 
snowdrifts higher than the buttresses; they 
that look out through windows on that side 
of thy palace see the wild geese flying low 
and all the birds of the winter, going by 
swift in packs beat low by the bitter wind, 
and the clouds above them are black, for it 
is midwinter there; while in thine other 
courts the fountains tinkle, faUing on marble 
warmed by the fire of the summer sun. 

"Such, King of the Years, shall thy 
palace be, and its name shall be Erlath- 
dronion, Earth's Wonder; and thy wisdom 
shall bid thine architects build at once, that 
aU may see what as yet the poets see only, 
and that prophecy be fulfilled." 

And when the poet ceased the Sultan 

157 



The Last Book of Wonder 

spake, and said, as all men hearkened with 
bent heads: 

"It will be unnecessary for my builders 
to build this palace, Erlathdronion, Earth's 
Wonder, for in hearing thee we have drunk 
already its pleasures." 

And the poet went forth from the Pres- 
ence and dreamed a new thing. 



158 




A Narrow Escape 



[t was underground. 

In that dank cavern down 
) below Belgrave Square the 
I walls were dripping. But 
I what was that to the magi- 
'cian? It was secrecy that he 
needed, not dryness. There he pondered 
upon the trend of events, shaped destinies 
and concocted magical brews. 

For the last few years the serenity of his 
ponderings had been disturbed by the noise 
of the motor-bus; while to his keen ears 
there came the earthquake-rumble, far off, 
of the train in the tube, going down Sloane 
Street; and when he heard of the world 
above his head was not to its credit. 

He decided one evening over his evil pipe, 
down there in his dank chamber, that Lon- 
don had lived long enough, had abused its 

159 



The Last Book of Wonder 

opportunities, had gone too far, in fine, 
with its civihsation. And so he decided to 
wreck it. 

Therefore he beckoned up his acolyte 
from the weedy end of the cavern, and, 
"Bring me," he said, "the heart of the toad 
that dwelleth in Arabia and by the moun- 
tains of Bethany." The acolyte shpped 
away by the hidden door, leaving that grim 
old man with his frightful pipe, and whither 
he went who knows but the gipsy people, 
or by what path he returned; but within a 
year he stood in the cavern again, slipping 
secretly in by the trap while the old man 
smoked, and he brought with him a little 
fleshy thing that rotted in a casket of pure 
gold. 

"What is it?" the old man croaked. 

"It is," said the acolyte, "the heart of 
the toad that dwelt once in Arabia and by 
the mountains of Bethany." 

The old man's crooked fingers closed on 
it, and he blessed the acolyte with his rasp- 
ing voice and claw-like hand uphfted; the 
motor-bus rumbled above on its endless 
journey; far off the train shook Sloane 
Street. 

160 



The Last Book of Wonder 

'*Come," said the old magician, "it is 
time." And there and then they left the 
weedy cavern, the acolyte carrying caul- 
dron, gold poker and all things needful, and 
went abroad in the Hght. And very won- 
derful the old man looked in his silks. 

Their goal was the outskirts of London; 
the old man strode in front and the acolyte 
ran behind him, and there was something 
magical in the old man's stride alone, with- 
out his wonderful dress, the cauldron and 
wand, the hurrying acolyte and the small 
gold poker. 

Little boys jeered till they caught the old 
man's eye. So there went on through Lon- 
don this strange procession of two, too 
swift for any to follow. Things seemed 
worse up there than they did in the cavern, 
and the further they got on their way to- 
wards London's outskirts the worse London 
got. "It is time," said the old man, "surely." 

And so they came at last to London's 
edge and a small hill watching it with a 
mournful look. It was so mean that the 
acolyte longed for the cavern, dank though 
it was and full of terrible sajdngs that the 
old man said when he slept. 

161 



The Last Book of Wonder 

They climbed the hill and put the caul- 
dron down, and put there in the necessary- 
things, and lit a fire of herbs that no chemist 
will sell nor decent gardener grow, and 
stirred the cauldron with the golden poker. 
The magician retired a httle apart and 
muttered, then he strode back to the caul- 
dron and, all being ready, suddenly opened 
the casket and let the fleshy thing fall in to 
boil. 

Then he made spells, then he flung up his 
arms; the fumes from the cauldron entering 
in at his mind he said raging things that he 
had not known before and runes that were 
dreadful (the acolyte screamed); there he 
cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from 
zenith to the abyss, motor-bus, factory, 
shop, parliament, people. "Let them all 
perish," he said, "and London pass away, 
tram lines and bricks and pavement, the 
usurpers too long of the fields, let them all 
pass away and the wild hares come back, 
blackberry and briar-rose." 

"Let it pass," he said, "pass now, pass 
utterly." 

In the momentary silence the old man 
coughed, then waited with eager eyes; and 

162 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the long long hum of London hummed as it 
always has since first the reed-huts were set 
up by the river, changing its note at times 
but always humming, louder now than it 
was in years gone by, but humming night 
and day though its voice be cracked with 
age; so it hummed on. 

And the old man turned him round to his 
trembling acolyte and terribly said as he 
sank into the earth: "You have not 

BROUGHT ME THE HEART OF THE TOAD 
THAT DWELLETH IN ARABIA NOB BY THE 
MOUNTAINS OF BeTHANy!" 



163 



The Watch-tower 



L»'6'J?S5'«Stl 



sat one April in Provence on 
a small hill above an ancient 
town that Goth and Vandal 
as yet have forborne to 
^J^S^I "bring up to date." 

On the hill was an old worn 
castle with a watch-tower, and a well with 
narrow steps and water in it still. 

The watch-tower, staring South with 
neglected windows, faced a broad valley 
full of the pleasant twilight and the hum of 
evening things : it saw the fires of wanderers 
blink from the hills, beyond them the long 
forest black with pines, one star appearing, 
and darkness settling slowly down on Var. 
Sitting there listening to the green frogs 
croaking, hearing far voices clearly but all 
transmuted by evening, watching the win- 
dows in the little town glimmering one by 

164 



The Last Book of Wonder 

one, and seeing the gloaming dwindle sol- 
emnly into night, a great many things fell 
from mind that seem important by day, and 
evening in their place planted strange 
fancies. 

Little winds had arisen and were whis- 
pering to and fro, it grew cold, and I was 
about to descend the hill, when I heard a 
voice behind me saying, "Beware, beware." 

So much the voice appeared a part of the 
evening that I did not turn round at first; 
it was like voices that one hears in sleep and 
thinks to be of one's dream. And the word 
was monotonously repeated, in French. 

When I turned round I saw an old man 
with a horn. He had a white beard mar- 
vellously long, and still went on saying 
slowly, "Beware, beware." He had clearly 
just come from the tower by which he stood, 
though I had heard no footfall. Had a man 
come stealthily upon me at such an hour 
and in so lonesome a place I had certainly 
felt surprised; but I saw almost at once that 
he was a spirit, and he seemed with his un- 
couth horn and his long white beard and 
that noiseless step of his to be so native to 
that time and place that I spoke to him as 

165 



The Last Book of Wonder 

one does to some fellow-traveller who asks 
you if you mind having the window up. 

I asked him what there was to beware of. 

"Of what should a town beware," he said, 
"but the Saracens?" 

"Saracens?" I said. 

"Yes, Saracens, Saracens," he answered 
and brandished his horn. 

"And who are you?" I said. 

"I, I am the spirit of the tower," he said. 

When I asked him how he came by so 
human an aspect and was so unlike the 
material tower beside him he told me that 
the lives of all the watchers who had ever 
held the horn in the tower there had gone 
to make the spirit of the tower. "It takes 
a hundred Hves," he said. "None hold the 
horn of late and men neglect the tower. 
When the walls are in ill repair the Saracens 
come: it was ever so." 

"The Saracens don't come nowadays," 
I said. 

But he was gazing past me watching, and 
did not seem to heed me. 

"They will run down those hills," he said, 
pointing away to the South, "out of the 
woods about nightfall, and I shall blow my 

166 



The Last Book of Wonder 

horn. The people will all come up from the 
town to the tower again; but the loopholes 
are in very ill repair," 

"We never hear of the Saracens now," I 
said. 

"Hear of the Saracens!" the old spirit 
said. "Hear of the Saracens! They slip 
one evening out of that forest, in the long 
white robes that they wear, and I blow my 
horn. That is the first that anyone ever 
hears of the Saracens." 

"I mean," I said, "that they never come 
at all. They cannot come and men fear 
other things." For I thought the old spirit 
might rest if he knew that the Saracens can 
never come again. But he said, "There is 
nothing in the world to fear but the Sara- 
cens. Nothing else matters. How can men 
fear other things?" 

Then I explained, so that he might have 
rest, and told him how all Europe, and in 
particular France, had terrible engines of 
war, both on land and sea; and how the 
Saracens had not these terrible engines 
either on sea or land, and so could by no 
means cross the Mediterranean or escape 
destruction on shore even though they 

167 



The Last Book of Wonder 

should come there. I alluded to the Euro- 
pean railways that could move armies night 
and day faster than horses could gallop. 
And when as well as I could I had explained 
all, he answered, "In time all these things 
pass away and then there will still be the 
Saracens." 

And then I said, "There has not been a 
Saracen either in France or Spain for over 
four hundred years." 

And he said, "The Saracens! You do not 
know their cunning. That was ever the 
way of the Saracens. They do not come 
for a while, no not they, for a long while, 
and then one day they come." 

And peering southwards, but not seeing 
clearly because of the rising mist, he silently 
moved to his tower and up its broken steps. 



16S 



How Plash- Goo 
Came to the Land 
of None 's Desire 



I 



•l^Ji^rSli 



n a thatched cottage of enor- 
mous size, so vast that we 
might consider it a palace, 
but only a cottage in the style 
of its building, its timbers and 



— the nature of its interior, there 
lived Plash-Goo. 

Plash-Goo was of the children of the 
giants, whose sire was Uph. And the lin- 
eage of Uph had dwindled in bulk for the 
last five hundred years, till the giants were 
now no more than fifteen foot high; but 
Uph ate elephants which he caught with his 
hands. 

Now on the tops of the mountains above 
the house of Plash-Goo, for Plash-Goo lived 
in the plains, there dwelt the dwarf whose 
name was Lrippity-Kang. 

169 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And the dwarf used to walk at evening on 
the edge of the tops of the mountains, and 
would walk up and down along it, and was 
squat and ugly and hairy, and was plainly 
seen of Plash-Goo. 

And for many weeks the giant had suf- 
fered the sight of him, but at length grew 
irked at the sight (as men are by little things) , 
and could not sleep of a night and lost his 
taste for pigs. And at last there came the 
day, as anyone might have known, when 
Plash-Goo shouldered his club and went 
up to look for the dwarf. 

And the dwarf though briefly squat was 
broader than may be dreamed, beyond all 
breadth of man, and stronger than men may 
know; strength in its very essence dwelt in 
that little frame, as a spark in the heart of a 
flint : but to Plash-Goo he was no more than 
mis-shapen, bearded and squat, a thing that 
dared to defy all natural laws by being more 
broad than long. 

When Plash-Goo came to the mountain 
he cast his chimahalk down (for so he named 
the club of his heart's desire) lest the dwarf 
should defy him with nimbleness; and 
stepped towards Lrippity-Kang with grip- 

170 



The Last Book of Wonder 

ping hands, who stopped in his mountain- 
ous walk without a word, and swung round 
his hideous breadth to confront Plash-Goo. 
Already then Plash-Goo in the deeps of 
his mind had seen himself seize the dwarf 
in one large hand and hurl him with his 
beard and his hated breadth sheer down the 
precipice that dropped away from that very 
place to the land of None's Desire. Yet it 
was otherwise that Fate would have it. 
For the dwarf parried with his little arms 
the grip of those monstrous hands, and grad- 
ually working along the enormous limbs 
came at length to the giant's body where by 
dwarfish cunning he obtained a grip; and 
turning Plash-Goo about, as a spider does 
some great fly, till his little grip was suit- 
able to his purpose, he suddenly Hfted the 
giant over his head. Slowly at first, by the 
edge of that precipice whose base sheer dis- 
tance hid, he swung his giant victim round 
his head, but soon faster and faster; and at 
last when Plash-Goo was streaming round 
the hated breadth of the dwarf and the no 
less hated beard was flapping in the wind, 
Lrippity-Kang let go. Plash-Goo shot over 
the edge and for some way further, out 

171 



The Last Book of Wonder 

towards Space, like a stone; then he began 
to fall. It was long before he believed and 
truly knew that this was really he that fell 
from this mountain, for we do not associate 
such dooms with ourselves; but when he had 
fallen for some while through the evening 
and saw below him, where there had been 
nothing to see, or began to see, the ghmmer 
of tiny fields, then his optimism departed; 
till later on when the fields were greener and 
larger he saw that this was indeed (and 
growing now terribly nearer) that very land 
to which he had destined the dwarf. 

At last he saw it unmistakable, close, with 
its grim houses and its dreadful ways, and 
its green fields shining in the light of the 
evening. His cloak was streaming from 
him in whistling shreds. 

So Plash-Goo came to the Land of None's 
Desire. 



172 



The Three 

Sailors ' Gamble 



bii^M 



itting some years ago in the 
ancient tavern at Over, one 
afternoon in Spring, I was 
p^^,p.^A?i^i^w5S3| waiting, as was my custom, 
^^^?i^g for something strange to hap- 
pen. In this I was not always 
disappointed for the very curious leaded 
panes of that tavern, facing the sea, let a 
light into the low-ceilinged room so myste- 
rious, particularly at evening, that it some- 
how seemed to affect the events within. Be 
that as it may, I have seen strange things 
in that tavern and heard stranger things 
told. 

And as I sat there three sailors entered 
the tavern, just back, as they said, from sea, 
and come with sunburned skins from a very 
long voyage to the South; and one of them 
had a board and chessmen under his arm, 

173 



The Last Book of Wonder 

and they were complaining that they could 
find no one who knew how to play chess. 
This was the year that the Tournament was 
in England. And a little dark man at a 
table in a corner of the room, drinking sugar 
and water, asked them why they wished to 
play chess; and they said that they would 
play any man for a pound. They opened 
their box of chessmen then, a cheap and 
nasty set, and the man refused to play with 
such uncouth pieces, and the sailors sug- 
gested that perhaps he could find better 
ones; and in the end he went round to his 
lodgings near by and brought his own, and 
then they sat down to play for a pound a 
side. It was a consultation game on the 
part of the sailors, they said all three must 
play. 

Well, the little dark man turned out to 
be Stavlokratz. 

Of course he was fabulously poor, and the 
sovereign meant more to him than it did to 
the sailors, but he didn't Seem keen to play, 
it was the sailors that insisted; he had made 
the badness of the sailors' chessmen an 
excuse for not playing at all, but the sailors 
had over-ruled that, and then he told them 

174 



The Last Book of Wonder 

straight out who he was, and the sailors had 
never heard of Stavlokratz. 

Well, no more was said after that. Stav- 
lokratz said no more, either because he did 
not wish to boast or because he was huffed 
that they did not know who he was. And 
I saw no reason to enhghten the sailors 
about him; if he took their pound they had 
brought it on themselves, and my boundless 
admiration for his genius made me feel that 
he deserved whatever might come his way. 
He had not asked to play, they had named 
the stakes, he had warned them, and gave 
them first move; there was nothing unfair 
about Stavlokratz. 

I had never seen Stavlokratz before, but 
I had played over nearly every one of his 
games in the World Championship for the 
last three or four years; he was always of 
course the model chosen by students. Only 
young chess-players can appreciate my 
delight at seeing him play first hand. 

Well, the sailors used to lower their heads 
ahnost as low as the table and mutter to- 
gether before every move, but they mut- 
tered so low that you could not hear what 
they planned. 

175 



The Last Book of Wonder 

They lost three pawns aknost straight off, 
then a knight, and shortly after a bishop; 
they were playing in fact the famous Three 
Sailors' Gambit. 

Stavlokratz was playing with the easy 
confidence that they say was usual with him, 
when suddenly at about the thirteenth move 
I saw him look surprised; he leaned forward 
and looked at the board and then at the sail- 
ors, but he learned nothing from their vacant 
faces; he looked back at the board again. 

He moved more deliberately after that; 
the sailors lost two more pawns, Stavlokratz 
had lost nothing as yet. He looked at me 
I thought almost irritably, as though some- 
thing would happen that he wished I was 
not there to see. I believed at first he had 
qualms about taking the sailors' pound, 
until it dawned on me that he might lose the 
game; I saw that possibility in his face, 
not on the board, for the game had become 
almost incomprehensible to me. I cannot 
describe my astonishment. And a few 
moves later Stavlokratz resigned. 

The sailors showed no more elation than 
if they had won some game with greasy 
cards, playing amongst themselves. 

176 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Stavlokratz asked them where they got 
their opening. "We kind of thought of it," 
said one. "It just come into our heads 
like," said another. He asked them ques- 
tions about the ports they had touched at. 
He evidently thought as I did myself that 
they had learned their extraordinary gam- 
bit, perhaps in some old dependancy of 
Spain, from some young master of chess 
whose fame had not reached Europe. He 
was very eager to find who this man could 
be, for neither of us imagined that those 
sailors had invented it, nor would anyone 
who had seen them. But he got no infor- 
mation from the sailors. 

Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss 
of a pound. He offered to play them again 
for the same stakes. The sailors began to 
set up the white pieces. Stavlokratz 
pointed out that it was his turn for first 
move. The sailors agreed but continued to 
set up the white pieces and sat with the 
white before them waiting for him to move. 
It was a trivial incident, but it revealed to 
Stavlokratz and myself that none of these 
sailors was aware that white always moves 
first. 

177 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Stavlokratz played on them his own open- 
ing, reasoning of course that as they had 
never heard of Stavlokratz they would not 
know of his opening; and with probably a 
very good hope of getting back his pound 
he played the fifth variation with its tricky 
seventh move, at least so he intended, but 
it turned to a variation unknown to the 
students of Stavlokratz. 

Throughout this game I watched the 
sailors closely, and I became sure, as only 
an attentive watcher can be, that the one 
on their left, Jim Bunion, did not even know 
the moves. 

When I had made up my mind about this 
I watched only the other two, Adam Bailey 
and Bill Sloggs, trying to make out which 
was the master mind; and for a long while 
I could not. And then I heard Adam 
Bailey mutter six words, the only words I 
heard throughout the game, of all their con- 
sultations, "No, him with the horse's head." 
And I decided that Adam Bailey did not 
know what a knight was, though of course 
he might have been explaining things to 
Bill Sloggs, but it did not sound like that; 
so that left Bill Sloggs. I watched Bill 

178 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Sloggs after that with a certain wonder; he 
was no more intellectual than the others to 
look at, though rather more forceful per- 
haps. Poor old Stavlokratz was beaten 
again. 

Well, in the end I paid for Stavlokratz, 
and tried to get a game with Bill Sloggs 
alone, but this he would not agree to, it 
must be all three or none: and then I went 
back with Stavlokratz to his lodgings. He 
very kindly gave me a game: of course it did 
not last long but I am more proud of having 
been beaten by Stavlokratz than of any 
game that I have ever won. And then we 
talked for an hour about the sailors, and 
neither of us could make head or tale of them. 
I told him what I had noticed about Jim 
Bunion and Adam Bailey, and he agreed 
with me that Bill Sloggs was the man, 
though as to how he had come by that gam- 
bit or that variation of Stavlokratz's own 
opening he had no theory. 

I had the sailors' address which was that 
tavern as much as anywhere, and they 
were to be there all that evening. As eve- 
ning drew in I went back to the tavern, and 
found there still the three sailors. And I 

179 



The Last Book of Wonder 

offered Bill Sloggs two pounds for a game 
with him alone and he refused, but in the 
end he played me for a drink. And then I 
found that he had not heard of the "en 
passant" rule, and believed that the fact of 
checking the king prevented him from 
castling, and did not know that a player can 
have two or more queens on the board at the 
same time if he queens his pawns, or that a 
pawn could ever become a knight; and he 
made as many of the stock mistakes as he 
had time for in a short game, which I won. 
I thought that I should have got at the 
secret then, but his mates who had sat 
scowling all the while in the corner came up 
and interfered. It was a breach of their 
compact apparently for one to play chess 
by himself, at any rate they seemed angry. 
So I left the tavern then and came back 
again next day, and the next day and the 
day after, and often saw the three sailors, 
but none were in a communicative mood. 
I had got Stavlokratz to keep away, and 
they could get no one to play chess with at 
a pound a side, and I would not play with 
them unless they told me the secret. 

And then one evening I found Jim Bunion 

180 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

drunk, yet not so drunk as he wished, for 
the two pounds were spent; and I gave him 
very nearly a tumbler of whiskey, or what 
passed for whiskey in that tavern at Over, 
and he told me the secret at once. I had 
given the others some whiskey to keep them 
quiet, and later on in the evening they must 
have gone out, but Jim Bunion stayed with 
me by a Uttle table leaning across it and 
talking low, right into my face, his breath 
smelling all the while of what passed for 
whiskey. 

The wind was blowing outside as it does 
on bad nights in November, coming up with 
moans from the South, towards which the 
tavern faced with all its leaded panes, so 
that none but I was able to hear his voice as 
Jim Bunion gave up his secret. 

They had sailed for years, he told me, 
with Bill Snyth; and on their last voyage 
home Bill Snyth had died. And he was 
buried at sea. Just the other side of the 
line they buried him, and his pals divided 
his kit, and these three got his crystal that 
only they knew he had, which Bill got one 
night in Cuba. They played chess with 
the crystal. 

181 



The Last Book of Wonder 

And he was going on to tell me about that 
night in Cuba when Bill had bought the 
crystal from the stranger, how some folks 
might think that they had seen thunder- 
storms, but let them go and listen to that 
one that thundered in Cuba when Bill was 
buying his crystal and they'd find that they 
didn't know what thunder was. But then 
I interrupted him, unfortunately perhaps, 
for it broke the thread of his tale and set 
him rambling a while, and cursing other 
people and talking of other lands, China, Port 
Said and Spain : but I brought him back to 
Cuba agnin in the end. I asked him how 
they could play chess with a crystal; and 
he said that you looked at the board and 
looked at the crystal and there was the game 
in the crystal the same as it was on the 
board, with all the odd little pieces looking 
just the same though smaller, horses' heads 
and whatnots; and as soon as the other man 
moved the move came out in the crystal, 
and then your move appeared after it, and 
all you had to do was to make it on the 
board. If you didn't make the move that 
you saw in the crystal things got very bad 
in it, everything horribly mixed and moving 

182 



The Last Book of Wonder 

about rapidly, and scowling and making the 
same move over and over again, and the 
crystal getting cloudier and cloudier; it was 
best to take one's eyes away from it then, 
or one dreamt about it afterwards, and the 
foul little pieces came and cursed you in 
your sleep and moved about all night with 
their crooked moves. 

I thought then that, drunk though he was, 
he was not telling the truth, and I promised 
to show him to people who played chess all 
their lives so that he and his mates could 
get a pound whenever they Hked, and I 
promised not to reveal his secret even to 
Stavlokratz, if only he would tell me all the 
truth; and this promise I have kept till long 
after the three sailors have lost their secret. 
I told him straight out that I did not believe 
in the crystal. Well, Jim Bunion leaned 
forward then, even further across the table, 
and swore he had seen the man from whom 
Bill had bought the crystal and that he was 
one to whom anything was possible. To 
begin with his hair was villainously dark, 
and his features were unmistakable even 
dov/n there in the South, and he could play 
chess with his eyes shut, and even then he 

183 



The Last Book of Wonder 

could beat anyone in Cuba. But ther was 
more than this, there was the bargain he 
made with Bill that told one who he was. 
He sold that crystal for Bill Snyth's soul. 

Jim Bunion leaning over the table with 
his breath in my face nodded his head sev- 
eral times and was silent. 

I began to question him then. Did they 
play chess as far away as Cuba? He said 
they all did. Was it conceivable that any 
man would make such a bargain as Snyth 
made? Wasn't the trick well known? 
Wasn't it in hundreds of books? And if 
he couldn't read books mustn't he have 
heard from sailors that that is the Devil's 
commonest dodge to get souls from silly 
people? 

Jim Bunion had leant back in his own 
chair quietly smihng at my questions but 
when I mentioned silly people he leaned 
forward again, and thrust his face close to 
mine and asked me several times if I called 
Bill Snyth silly. It seemed that these three 
sailors thought a great deal of Bill Snyth 
and it made Jim Bunion angry to hear any- 
thing said against him. I hastened to say 
that the bargain seemed silly though not of 

184 



The Last Book, of Wonder 

course the man who made it; for the sailor 
was ahnost threatening, and no wonder for 
the whiskey in that dim tavern would mad- 
den a nun. 

When I said that the bargain seemed 
silly he smiled again, and then he thundered 
his fist down on the table and said that no 
one had ever yet got the better of Bill Snyth 
and that that was the worst bargain for 
himself that the Devil ever made, and that 
from all he had read or heard of the Devil 
he had never been so badly had before as 
the night when he met Bill Snyth at the inn 
in the thunderstorm in Cuba, for Bill Snyth 
already had the damnedest soul at sea; 
Bill was a good fellow, but his soul was 
damned right enough, so he got the crystal 
for nothing. 

Yes, he was there and saw it all himself, 
Bill Snyth in the Spanish inn and the can- 
dles flaring, and the Devil walking in out of 
the rain, and then the bargain between 
those two old hands, and the Devil going 
out into the lightning, and the thunder- 
storm raging on, and Bill Snyth sitting 
chuckhng to himseK between the bursts of 
the thunder. 

185 



The Last Book of Wonder 

But I had more questions to ask and inter- 
rupted this reminiscence. Why did they 
all three always play together? And a look 
of something Hke fear came over Jim 
Bunion's face; and at first he would not 
speak. And then he said to me that it was 
like this; they had not paid for that crystal, 
but got it as their share of Jim Bunion's kit. 
If they had paid for it or given something 
in exchange to Bill Snyth that would have 
been all right, but they couldn't do that 
now because Bill was dead, and they were 
not sure if the old bargain might not hold 
good. And Hell must be a large and lonely 
place, and to go there alone must be bad, 
and so the three agreed that they would all 
stick together, and use the crystal all three 
or not at all, unless one died, and then the 
two would use it and the one that was gone 
would wait for them. And the last of the 
three to go would bring the crystal with 
him, or maybe the crystal would bring him. 
They didn't think, he said, they were the 
kind of men for Heaven, and he hoped they 
knew their place better than that, but they 
didn't fancy the notion of Hell alone, if Hell 
it had to be. It was all right for Bill Snyth, 

186 



The Last Book of Wonder 

he was afraid of nothing. He had known 
perhaps five men that were not afraid of 
death, but Bill Snyth was not afraid of Hell. 
He died with a smile on his face like a child 
in its sleep; it was drink killed poor Bill 
Snyth. 

This was why I had beaten Bill Sloggs; 
Sloggs had the crystal on him while we 
played, but would not use it; these sailors 
seemed to fear loneliness as some people 
fear being hurt; he was the only one of the 
three who could play chess at all, he had 
learnt it in order to be able to answer ques- 
tions and keep up their pretence, but he had 
learnt it badly, as I found. I never saw the 
crystal, they never showed it to anyone; 
but Jim Bunion told me that night that it 
was about the size that the thick end of a 
hen's egg would be if it were round. And 
then he fell asleep. 

There were many more questions that I 
would have asked him but I could not wake 
him up. I even pulled the table away so 
that he fell to the floor, but he slept on, and 
all the tavern was dark but for one candle 
burning; and it was then that I noticed for 
the first time that the other two sailors had 

187 



The Last Book of Wonder 

gone, no one remained at all but Jim Bunion 
and I and the sinister barman of that 
curious inn, and he too was asleep. 

When I saw that it was impossible to 
wake the sailor I went out into the night. 
Next day Jim Bunion would talk of it no 
more; and when I went back to Stavlokratz 
I found him already putting on paper his 
theory about the sailors, which became 
accepted by chess-players, that one of them 
had been taught their curious gambit and 
the other two between them had learnt all 
the defensive openings as well as general 
play. Though who taught them no one 
could say, in spite of enquiries made after- 
wards all along the Southern Pacific. 

I never learnt any more details from any 
of the three sailors, they were always too 
drunk to speak or else not drunk enough to 
be communicative. I seem just to have 
taken Jim Bunion at the flood. But I kept 
my promise, it was I that introduced them 
to the Tournament, and a pretty mess they 
made of established reputations. And so 
they kept on for months, never losing a 
game and always playing for their pound a 
side. I used to follow them wherever they 

188 



The Last BooJ^ of Wonder 

went merely to watch their play. They 
were more marvellous than Stavlokratz 
even in his youth. 

But then they took to liberties such as 
giving their queen when playing first-class 
players. And in the end one day when all 
three were drunk they played the best 
player in England with only a row of pawns. 
They won the game all right. But the ball 
broke to pieces. I never smelt such a 
stench in all my life. 

The three sailors took it stoically enough, 
they signed on to different ships and went 
back again to the sea, and the world of 
chess lost sight, for ever I trust, of the most 
remarkable players it ever knew, who would 
have altogether spoiled the game. 



189 



The Exile's Club 



W(n -wr !>©? 




t was an evening party; and 
something someone had said 
to me had started me talking 
about a subject that to me is 
full of fascination, the subject 
of old religions, forsaken gods. 
The truth (for all rehgions have some of it), 
the wisdom, the beauty, of the rehgions of 
countries to which I travel have not the 
same appeal for me; for one only notices in 
them their tyranny and intolerance and the 
abject servitude that they claim from 
thought; but when a dynasty has been 
dethroned in heaven and goes forgotten 
and outcast even among men, one's eyes 
no longer dazzled by its power find some- 
thing very wistful in the faces of fallen gods 
suppliant to be remembered, something 
almost tearfully beautiful, like a long warm 

190 



The Last Book of Wonder 

summer twilight fading gently away after 
some day memorable in the story of earthly 
wars. Between what Zeus, for instance, has 
been once and the half-remembered tale 
he is to-day there lies a space so great that 
there is no change of fortune known to 
man whereby we may measure the height 
down which he has fallen. And it is the 
same with many another god at whom once 
the ages trembled and the twentieth cen- 
tury treats as an old wives' tale. The 
fortitude that such a fall demands is surely 
more than human. 

Some such things as these I was saying, 
and being upon a subject that much 
attracts me I possibly spoke too loudly, 
certainly I was not aware that standing 
close behind me was no less a person than 
the ex-King of Eritivaria, the thirty islands 
of the East, or I would have moderated 
my voice and moved away a httle to give him 
more room. I was not aware of his presence 
until his satellite, one who had fallen with 
him into exile but still revolved about him, 
told me that his master desired to know 
me; and so to my surprise I was presented 
though neither of them even knew my 

191 



The Last Book of Wonder 

name. And that was how I came to be 
invited by the ex-King to dine at his club. 

At the time I could only account for his 
wishing to know me by supposing that he 
found in his own exiled condition some 
hkeness to the fallen fortunes of the gods 
of whom I talked unwitting of his presence; 
but now I know that it was not of himself 
he was thinking when he asked me to dine 
at that club. 

The club would have been the most 
imposing building in any street in London, 
but in that obscure mean quarter of London 
in which they had built it it appeared 
unduly enormous. Lifting right up above 
those grotesque houses and built in that 
Greek style that we call Georgian, there 
was something Olympian about it. To 
my host an unfashionable street could 
have meant nothing, through all his youth 
wherever he had gone had become fashion- 
able the moment he went there; words 
like the East End could have had no mean- 
ing to him. 

Whoever built that house had enormous 
wealth and cared nothing for fashion, 
perhaps despised it. As I stood gazing at 

192 



The Last Book of Wonder 

the magnificent upper windows draped 
with great curtains, indistinct in the evening, 
on which huge shadows flickered my host 
attracted my attention from the doorway, 
and so I went in and met for the second time 
the ex-King of Eritivaria. 

In front of us a stairway of rare marble 
led upwards, he took me through a side-door 
and downstairs and we came to a banquet- 
ing-hall of great magnificence. A long 
table ran up the middle of it, laid for quite 
twenty people, and I noticed the pecuH- 
arity that instead of chairs there were 
thrones for everyone except me, who was 
the only guest and for whom there was an 
ordinary chair. My host explained to me 
when we all sat down that everyone who 
belonged to that club was by rights a king. 

In fact none was permitted, he told me, 
to belong to the club until his claim to a 
kingdom made out in writing had been 
examined and allowed by those whose 
duty it was. The whim of a populace 
or the candidate's own misrule were never 
considered by the investigators, nothing 
counted with them but heredity and law- 
ful descent from kings, all else was ignored. 

193 



The Last Book of Wonder 

At that table there were those who had 
once reigned themselves, others lawfully 
claimed descent from kings that the world 
had forgotten, the kingdoms claimed by 
some had even changed their names. 
Hatzgurh, the mountain kingdom, is almost 
regarded as mythical. 

I have seldom seen greater splendour than 
that long hall provided below the level of the 
street. No doubt by day it was a little 
sombre, as all basements are, but at night 
with its great crystal chandeliers, and the 
glitter of heirlooms that had gone into exile, 
it surpassed the splendour of palaces that 
have only one king. They had come to 
London suddenly most of those kings, or 
their fathers before them, or forefathers; 
some had come away from their kingdoms 
by night, in a Hght sleigh, flogging the horses, 
or had galloped clear with morning over the 
border, some had trudged roads for days 
from their capital in disguise, yet many had 
had time just as they left to snatch up some 
small thing without price in markets, for the 
sake of old times as they said, but quite as 
much, I thought, with an eye to the future. 
And there these treasures glittered on that 

194 



The Last Book of Wonder 

long table in the banqueting-hall of the base- 
ment of that strange club. Merely to see 
them was much, but to hear their story that 
their owners told was to go back in fancy 
to epic times on the romantic border of fable 
and fact, where the heroes of history fought 
with the gods of myth. The famous silver 
horses of Gilgianza were there climbing 
their sheer mountain, which they did by 
miraculous means before the time of the 
Goths. It was not a large piece of silver 
but its workmanship outrivalled the skill of 
the bees. 

A yellow Emperor had brought out of the 
East a piece of that incomparable porce- 
lain that had made his dynasty famous 
though all their deeds are forgotten, it had 
the exact shade of the right purple. 

And there was a Httle golden statuette of 
a dragon stealing a diamond from a lady, 
the dragon had the diamond in his claws, 
large and of the first water. There had 
been a kingdom whose whole constitution 
and history were founded on the legend, 
from which alone its kings had claimed their 
right to the sceptre, that a dragon stole a 
diamond from a lady. When its last king 

195 



The Last Book of Wonder 

left that country, because his favourite gen- 
eral used a peculiar formation under the fire 
of artillery, he brought with him the little 
ancient image that no longer proved him a 
king outside that singular club. 

There was the pair of amethyst cups of 
the turbaned King of Foo, the one that he 
drank from himself, and the one that he 
gave to his enemies, eye could not tell which 
was which. 

All these things the ex-King of Eritivaria 
showed me, telling me a marvellous tale of 
each; of his own he had brought nothing, 
except the mascot that used once to sit on 
the top of the water tube of his favourite 
motor. 

I have not outlined a tenth of the splen- 
dour of that table, I had meant to come 
again and examine each piece of plate and 
make notes of its history; had I known that 
this was the last time I should wish to enter 
that club I should have looked at its treas- 
ures more attentively, but now as the wine 
went round and the exiles began to talk I 
took my eyes from the table and hstened to 
strange tales of their former state. 

He that has seen better times has usually 

196 



The Last Book of Wonder 

a poor tale to tell, some mean and trivial 
thing has been his undoing, but they that 
dined in that basement had mostly fallen 
like oaks on nights of abnormal tempest, had 
fallen mightily and shaken a nation. Those 
who had not been kings themselves, but 
claimed through an exiled ancestor, had 
stories to tell of even grander disaster, his- 
tory seeming to have mellowed their dy- 
nasty's fate as moss grows over an oak a 
great while fallen. There were no jealous- 
ies there as so often there are among kings, 
rivalry must have ceased with the loss of 
their navies and armies, and they showed 
no bitterness against those that had turned 
them out, one speaking of the error of his 
Prime Minister by which he had lost his 
throne as ''poor old Friedrich's Heaven-sent 
gift of tactlessness." 

They gossipped pleasantly of many things, 
the tittle-tattle we all had to know when we 
were learning history, and many a wonder- 
ful story I might have heard, many a side- 
light on mysterious wars had I not made use 
of one unfortunate word. That word was 
"upstairs." 

The ex-King of Eritivaria having pointed 

197 



The Last Book of Wonder 

out to me those unparalleled heirlooms to 
which I have alluded, and many more 
besides, hospitably asked me if there was 
anything else that I would care to see, he 
meant the pieces of plate that they had in 
the cupboards, the curiously graven swords 
of other princes, historic jewels, legendary 
seals, but I who had had a glimpse of their 
marvellous staircase, whose balustrade I 
believed to be solid gold and wondering why 
in such a stately house they chose to dine in 
the basement, mentioned the word "up- 
stairs." A profound hush came down on 
the whole assembly, the hush that might 
greet levity in a cathedral. 

"Upstairs!" he gasped. "We cannot go 
upstairs." 

I perceived that what I had said was an 
ill-chosen thing. I tried to excuse myself 
but knew not how. 

"Of course," I muttered, "members may 
not take guests upstairs." 

"Members!" he said to me. "We are 
not the members!" 

There was such reproof in his voice that 
I said no more, I looked at him question- 
ingly, perhaps my lips moved, I may have 

198 



The Last Book of Wonder 

said "What are you?" A great surprise 
had come on me at their attitude. 

"We are the waiters," he said. 

That I could not have known, here at 
least was honest ignorance that I had no 
need to be ashamed of, the very opulence of 
their table denied it. 

"Then who are the members?" I asked. 

Such a hush fell at that question, such a 
hush of genuine awe, that all of a sudden a 
wild thought entered my head, a thought 
strange and fantastic and terrible. I 
gripped my host by the wrist and hushed 
my voice. 

"Are they too exiles?" I asked. 

Twice as he looked in my face he gravely 
nodded his head. 

I left that club very swiftly indeed, never 
to see it again, scarcely pausing to say fare- 
well to those menial kings, and as I left the 
door a great window opened far up at the 
top of the house and a flash of lightning 
streamed from it and killed a dog. 



199 




The Three 

Infernal Jokes 

Ihis is the story that the des- 
olate man told to me on the 
lonely Highland road one au- 
Itumn evening with winter 
(coming on and the stags roar- 
'ing. 

The saddening twilight, the mountain 
already black, the dreadful melancholy of 
the stags' voices, his friendless mournful 
face, all seemed to be of some most sorrow- 
ful play staged in that valley by an outcast 
god, a lonely play of which the hills were 
part and he the only actor. 

For long we watched each other drawing 
out of the solitudes of those forsaken spaces. 
Then when we met he spoke. 

" I will tell you a thing that will make you 
die of laughter. I will keep it to myself no 

200 



The. Last Book of Wonder 

longer. But first I must tell you how I 
came by it. " 

I do not give the story in his words with 
all his woeful interjections and the misery of 
his frantic self-reproaches for I would not 
convey unnecessarily to my readers that 
atmosphere of sadness that was about all he 
said and that seemed to go with him where- 
ever he moved. 

It seems that he had been a member of a 
club, a West-end club he called it, a respect- 
able but quite inferior affair, probably in the 
City: agents belonged to it, fire insurance 
mostly, but life insurance and motor-agents 
too, it was in fact a touts' club. 

It seems that a few of them one evening, 
forgetting for a moment their encyclopedias 
and non-stop tyres, were talking loudly over 
a card-table when the game had ended about 
their personal virtues, and a very little man 
with waxed moustaches who disliked the 
taste of wine was boasting heartily of his 
temperance. It was then that he who told 
this mournful story, drawn on by the boasts 
of others, leaned forward a little over the 
green baize into the light of the two gutter- 
ing candles and revealed, no doubt a little 

201 



The Last Book of Wonder 

shyly, his own extraordinary virtue. One 
woman was to him as ugly as another. 

And the silenced boasters rose and went 
home to bed leaving him all alone, as he 
supposed, with his unequalled virtue. And 
yet he was not alone, for when the rest had 
gone there arose a member out of a deep 
arm-chair at the dark end of the room and 
walked across to him, a man whose occupa- 
tion he did not know and only now suspects. 

"You have," said the stranger, "a sur- 
passing virtue." 

"I have no possible use for it," my poor 
friend rephed. 

"Then doubtless you would sell it cheap," 
said the stranger. 

Something in the man's manner or appear- 
ance made the desolate teller of this mourn- 
ful tale feel his own inferiority, which prob- 
ably made him feel acutely shy, so that his 
mind abased itself as an Oriental does his 
body in the presence of a superior, or per- 
haps he was sleepy, or merely a httle drunk. 
Whatever it was he only mumbled, " 
yes," instead of contradicting so mad a 
remark. And the stranger led the way to 
the room where the telephone was. 

202 



The Last Book of Wonder 

"I think you will find my firm will give 
a good price for it," he said: and without 
more ado he began with a pair of pincers to 
cut the wire of the telephone and the re- 
ceiver. The old waiter who looked after 
the club they had left shuffling round the 
other room putting things away for the 
night. 

"Whatever are you doing of?" said my 
friend. 

"This way," said the stranger. Along 
a passage they went and away to the back 
of the club and there the stranger leaned out 
of a window and fastened the severed wires 
to the Hghtning conductor. My friend has 
no doubt of that, a broad ribbon of copper, 
half an inch wide, perhaps wider, running 
down from the roof to the earth. 

"Hell," said the stranger with his mouth 
to the telephone; then silence for a while 
with his ear to the receiver, leaning out of 
the window. And then my friend heard 
his poor virtue being several times repeated, 
and then words like Yes and No. 

"They offer you three jokes," said the 
stranger, "which shall make all who hear 
them simply die of laughter." 

203 



The Last Book of Wonder 

I think my friend was reluctant then to 
have anything more to do with it, he wanted 
to go home; he said he didn't want jokes. 

"They think very highly of your virtue," 
said the stranger. And at that, odd as it 
seems, my friend wavered, for logically if 
they thought highly of the goods they should 
have paid a higher price. 

"OaU right," he said. 

The extraordinary document that the 
agent drew from his pocket ran something 
hke this: 

"I in consideration of three 

new jokes received from Mr. Montagu- 
Montague, hereinafter to be called the agent, 
and warranted to be as by him stated and 
described, do assign to him, yield, abrogate 
and give up all recognitions, emoluments, 
perquisites or rewards due to me Here or 
Elsewhere on account of the following virtue, 

to wit and that is to say that all 

women are to me equally ugly." The last 
eight words being filled in in ink by Mr. 
Montagu-Montague. 

My poor friend duly signed it. "These 
are the jokes," said the agent. They were 
boldly written on three slips of paper. 

204 



The Last Book o/ Wonder 

"They don't seem very funny/' said the 
other when he had read them. "You are 
immune," said Mr. Montagu-Montague, 
"but anyone else who hears them will simply 
die of laughter: that we guarantee." 

An American firm had bought at the price 
of waste paper a hundred thousand copies 
of The Dictionary of Electricity written 
when electricity was new, — and it had 
turned out that even at the time its author 
had not rightly grasped his subject, — the 
firm had paid £10,000 to a respectable 
English paper (no other in fact than the 
Briton) for the use of its name, and to obtain 
orders for The Briton Dictionary of Electric- 
ity was the occupation of my unfortunate 
friend. He seems to have had a way with 
him. Apparently he knew by a glance at 
a man, or a look round at his garden, whether 
to recommend the book as "an absolutely 
up-to-date achievement, the finest thing of 
its kind in the world of modern science" or 
as "at once quaint and imperfect, a thing 
to buy and to keep as a tribute to those dear 
old times that are gone." So he went on 
with this quaint though usual business, 
putting aside the memory of that night as 

205 



The Last Book ^f Wonder 

an occasion on which he had "somewhat 
exceeded" as they say in circles where a 
spade is called neither a spade nor an agri- 
cultural implement but is never mentioned 
at all, being altogether too vulgar. 

And then one night he put on his suit of 
dress clothes and found the three jokes in 
the pocket. That was perhaps a shock. 
He seems to have thought it over carefully 
then, and the end of it was he gave a dinner 
at the club to twenty of the members. The 
dinner would do no harm he thought — 
might even help the business, and if the joke 
came off he would be a witty fellow, and 
two jokes still up his sleeve. 

Whom he invited or how the dinner went 
I do not know for he began to speak rapidly 
and came straight to the point, as a stick 
that nears a cataract suddenly goes faster 
and faster. The dinner was duly served, 
the port went round, the twenty men were 
smoking, two waiters loitered, when he after 
carefully reading the best of the jokes told 
it down the table. They laughed. One 
man accidentally inhaled his cigar smoke 
and spluttered, the two waiters overheard 
and tittered behind their hands, one man, 

206 



The Last Book of Wonder 

a bit of a raconteur himself, quite clearly 
wished not to laugh, but his veins swelled 
dangerously in trying to keep it back, and 
in the end he laughed too. The joke had 
succeeded; my friend smiled at the thought; 
he wished to say little deprecating things to 
the man on his right; but the laughter did 
not stop and the waiters would not be silent. 
He waited, and waited wondering; the 
laughter went roaring on, distinctly louder 
now, and the waiters as loud as any. It 
had gone on for three or four minutes when 
this frightful thought leaped up all at once 
in his mind: it was forced laughter! How- 
ever could anything have induced him to 
tell so fooUsh a joke? He saw its absurdity 
as in revelation; and the more he thought 
of it as these people laughed at him, even 
the waiters too, the more he felt that he 
could never Hft up his head with his brother 
touts again. And still the laughter went 
roaring and choking on. He was very 
angry. There was not much use in having 
a friend, he thought, if one silly joke could 
not be overlooked; he had fed them too. 
And then he felt that he had no friends at 
all, and his anger faded away, and a great 

207 



The Last Book of Wonder 

unhappiness came down on him, and he got 
quietly up and slunk from the room and 
slipped away from the club. Poor man, he 
scarcely had the heart next morning even to 
glance at the papers, but you did not need 
to glance at them, big type was bandied 
about that day as though it were common 
type, the words of the headlines stared at 
you; and the headUnes said: — Twenty- 
Two Dead Men at a Club. 

Yes, he saw it then: the laughter had not 
stopped, some had probably burst blood 
vessels, some must have choked, some suc- 
cumbed to nausea, heart-failure must have 
mercifully taken some, and they were his 
friends after all, and none had escaped, not 
even the waiters. It was that infernal joke. 

He thought out swiftly, and remembers 
clear as a nightmare, the drive to Victoria 
Station, the boat-train to Dover and going 
disguised to the boat : and on the boat pleas- 
antly smiling, almost obsequious, two con- 
stables that wished to speak for a moment 
with Mr. Watkyn-Jones. That was his 
name. 

In a third-class carriage with handcuffs 
on his wrists, with forced conversation when 

208 



The Last Book of Wonder 

any, he returned between his captors to 
Victoria to be tried for murder at the High 
Court of Bow. 

At the trial he was defended by a young 
barrister of considerable ability who had 
gone into the Cabinet in order to enhance 
his forensic reputation. And he was ably 
defended. It is no exaggeration to say that 
the speech for the defence showed it to be 
usual, even natural and right, to give a 
dinner to twenty men and to shp away with- 
out ever saying a word, leaving all, with 
the waiters, dead. That was the impression 
left in the minds of the jury. And Mr. 
Watkyn-Jones felt himself practically free, 
with all the advantages of his awful experi- 
ence, and his two jokes intact. But law- 
yers are still experimenting with the new 
act which allows a prisoner to give evidence. 
They do not like to make no use of it for 
fear they may be thought not to know of the 
act, and a lawyer who is not in touch with 
the very latest laws is soon regarded as not 
being up to date and he may drop as much 
as £50,000 a year in fees. And therefore 
though it always hangs their cUents they 
hardly like to neglect it. 

209 



The Last Book of Wonder 

Mr. Watkyn-Jones was put in the witness 
box. There he told the simple truth, and 
a very poor affair it seemed after the im- 
passioned and beautiful things that were 
uttered by the counsel for the defence. 
Men and women had wept when they heard 
that. They did not weep when they heard 
Watkyn-Jones. Some tittered. It no 
longer seemed a right and natural thing to 
leave one's guests all dead and to fly the 
country. Where was Justice, they asked, 
if anyone could do that? And when his 
story was told the judge rather happily 
asked if he could make him die of laughter 
too. And what was the joke? For in so grave 
a place as a Court of Justice no fatal effects 
need be feared. And hesitatingly the pris- 
oner pulled from his pocket the three slips 
of paper: and perceived for the first time 
that the one on which the first and best joke 
had been written had become quite blank. 
Yet he could remember it, and only too 
clearly. And he told it from memory to the 
Court. 

"An Irishman once on being asked by his 
master to buy a morning paper said in his 
usual witty way, 'Arrah and begorrah and 

210 



The Last Book of Wonder 

I will be after wishing you the top of the 
morning. ' " 

No joke sounds quite so good the second 
time it is told, it seems to lose something 
of its essence, but Watkyn- Jones was not 
prepared for the awful stillness with which 
this one was received; nobody smiled; and it 
had killed twenty-two men. The joke was 
bad, devilish bad; counsel for the defence 
was frowning, and an usher was looking in a 
little bag for something the judge wanted. 
And at this moment, as though from far 
away, without his wishing it, there entered 
the prisoner's head, and shone there and 
would not go, this old bad proverb: "As 
well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb." 
The jury seemed to be just about to retire. 
"I have another joke," said Watkjni- 
Jones, and then and there he read from the 
second shp of paper. He watched the paper 
curiously to see if it would go blank, occupy- 
ing his mind with so sHght a thing as men in 
dire distress very often do, and the words 
were almost immediately expunged, swept 
swiftly as if by a hand, and he saw the paper 
before him as blank as the first. And they 
were laughing this time, judge, jury, counsel 

211 



The Last Book of Wonder 

for the prosecution, audience and all, and 
the grim men that watched him upon 
either side. There was no mistake about 
this joke. 

He did not stay to see the end, and 
walked out with his eyes fixed on the ground, 
unable to bear a glance to the right or left. 
And since then he has wandered, avoiding 
ports and roaming lonely places. Two 
years have known him on the Highland 
roads, often hungry, always friendless, al- 
ways changing his district, wandering lonely 
on with his deadly joke. 

Sometimes for a moment he will enter 
inns, driven by cold and hunger, and hear 
men in the evening telling jokes and even 
challenging him; but he sits desolate and 
silent, lest his only weapon should escape 
from him and his last joke spread mourning 
in a hundred cots. His beard has grown 
and turned grey and is mixed with moss and 
weeds, so that no one, I think, not even the 
pohce, would recognise him now for that 
dapper tout that sold The Briton Dictionary 
of Electricity in such a different land. 

He paused, his story told, and then his 
hp quivered as though he would say more, 

212 



The Last Book of Wonder 

and I believe he intended then and there to 
yield up his deadly joke on that Highland 
road and to go forth then with his three 
blank shps of paper, perhaps to a felon's 
cell, with one more murder added to his 
crimes, but harmless at last to man. I 
therefore hurried on, and only heard him 
mumbling sadly behind me, standing bowed 
and broken, all alone in the twilight, perhaps 
telling over and over even then the last 
infernal joke. 

THE END 



213 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
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Treatment Date: June 2009 

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